


marked me like a bloodstain

by drunkonyou



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, But in the good way, Chronic Illness, Fluff, Halloween, Humor, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Supernatural Elements, Supernatural Illnesses, Vampire Gerard Way, Vampire Mikey Way, take a shot every time i use the word weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29563299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkonyou/pseuds/drunkonyou
Summary: “Gerard and Mikey are sort of vampires,” Ray offers, with a shrug that’s way too casual for this whole fucking thing.“Okay,” Frank says, putting his head back between his knees, “I think I am gonna puke.”Your typical boy-meets-vampire story, if there ever was one. Featuring sketchy new coworkers, haunted house actors that definitely don’t have anemia, a ride-or-die best friend who gets caught in the middle of it all, and the impending full moon (which doesn’t just affect werewolves, apparently). It’s safe to say that the weeks leading up to Frank’s 25th birthday are some of the weirdest—and best—of his life.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way
Comments: 96
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> she’s finally here…my labor of love…who sort of was supposed to be posted for halloween but we’re not going to talk about that :)
> 
> i’m so excited for this! if you follow me on twitter you know i’ve been posting snippets for months so i’m over the moon that i finally get to hand her over. can you believe this is the longest fic i’ve ever written? the full thing is just shy of 60k omg
> 
> let me know if i need to spruce up any tags! and also this is once again unbeta’d so all mistakes (i’m sure there will be some) are my own!
> 
> title from cardigan by taylor swift 
> 
> buckle up and enjoy! and remember…vampires will never hurt you

_Oh how wrong we were to think that immortality meant never dying._

– Ancient Proverb

  
  


“How can you keep an eye on the shop if you’re out here?”

Frank looks up from the pumpkin he’s gutting to find Ray coming down the sidewalk with a big paper bag cradled in the crook of his arm. _Chinese food._ Fuck, that man’s an angel. If he showed up in like ten minutes, Frank would already have a face full of shitty pizza from the hole-in-the-wall across the street because he forgot to bring something from home like an idiot. He hates that pizza place. And he’s pretty sure it hates him right back.

He plucks his cigarette from his mouth, his lips sticking to the paper a bit, and grins. “Honor system, Toro. Don’t you see that pile of money on the counter?”

When Ray reaches the shop and where Frank is sitting cross-legged on the ground outside it with his would-be jack-o’-lantern in his lap, he peeks through the gaps in the posters stuck on the inside of the window. “Hm,” he says thoughtfully. “What about inventory?”

Frank laughs and lets himself be pulled to his feet by the elbow when Ray sticks out a helping hand. “Come on, man, it’s like you don’t know how we run the place.”

Ray shoves the heavy bag of warm, fucking delicious-smelling Chinese food into Frank’s arms. “Here, it’s kind of cold out.” He rubs Frank’s shoulder for good measure and Frank over-exaggerates by letting himself flop around like a ragdoll. “I know what you do,” he says, laughing, “but now that you’re getting more business I’m just worried people might try to take advantage, you know?”

Frank takes one last drag of his cigarette and flicks it into the pile of pumpkin guts on the sidewalk. “You’re gonna give yourself gray hair, Toro.”

He pulls the door to the shop open and waves Ray inside. One of their regulars is sitting on an overturned milk crate tucked into the corner reading the back of an _Evil Dead II_ VHS. She must have snuck in when Frank was elbow deep in his pumpkin.

“Hey, Grace. Playing hooky?” Frank asks her when he heaves the bag of food onto the counter.

She looks up and flashes her braces. She’s got orange and black rubber bands for the spooky season. _Sick._ “Nah, I’m too pussy for that. A bunch of the classrooms are getting, like, fumigated, or whatever, so we get a four day weekend. Hey, is this still five bucks?”

“Yup.”

“Sweet. Hey, Ray, I saw your ad you uploaded. It makes this place look cooler than it is.”

Grace is a sarcastic little shit, but Ray beams at the compliment like the sunflower he is. Frank rolls his eyes as he starts to unpack their lunch. He pushes the pile of money aside and makes a mental note not to forget to put it in the register or Schechter will really have his ass this time.

“Thank you, Grace!” Frank can still hear the smile in Ray’s voice and it makes him smile too. “The official Record Store Day account retweeted it yesterday, so that was pretty cool.”

Ray goes around the counter while Frank is still setting all their food up and starts sorting the money into their slots in the drawer. “Which is what I’m trying to tell you,” he says quietly to him, even though Grace is too absorbed in her VHS tape to eavesdrop. She’s a good kid though, so Frank doesn’t really care if she heard. He trusts his customers! Mutual respect, and all that. “I’m not trying to gloat or anything, but you’re probably going to be getting a lot more outside business, especially if I can get the ad on air.”

Frank pops open a carton of boneless ribs and sticks his nose in. “Man, I appreciate the hell out of everything you’re doing, but you don’t have to _worry.”_ Frank plunges his dirty fingers into the carton and grabs a couple of the ribs. He pops them in his mouth while Ray’s preoccupied with counting the money for him. His mouth full, he pushes over the legal pad and says, “Look, everyone knows what to do when no one’s in the shop.”

On the pad Frank had drawn a line down the middle of the page and wrote _Item_ on one side and _Price_ on the other. He adds up the numbers in his head from the price column, sucking on his fingers that kind of taste like shit from the pumpkin and from smoking.

“Did you get…fifty-two bucks?”

Ray pushes the drawer shut. “Yeah, I did,” he says, kind of forlornly.

“So see? We’re all good!” Frank stretches over the counter to ruffle Ray’s hair, which makes Ray screw his face up even though Frank knows he kind of loves it. “We’ll worry about this _outside business_ when it walks through the door, alright?”

Just then the sleigh bells hanging above the door jingle and in walks a vampire. No, actually, just some pale skinny guy dressed in head to toe black that Frank hasn’t seen around before. He’s got pitch-black sunglasses on too, even though it’s been overcast all day. Frank bites his tongue so he doesn’t say something that’ll make Ray smack him. He does make a face though as the guy sticks his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt and looks around the shop like he’s never been in a record store before, and then Frank catches Grace’s eye, and she goes purple in the face trying not to laugh.

The guy looks over at him and Ray suddenly, and his eyebrows shoot up over his sunglasses; he takes a hand out of his pocket and takes them off. And then he smiles, and Frank’s fingers start to tingle. He must be from the city or something. He’s always had a bit of a soft spot for city boys, or whatever Ray’s said about him before.

“Hey, sorry, these things are like horse blinders.” He hooks the sunglasses in the collar of his sweatshirt and sticks his hand out as he walks over on _long_ legs. “My name’s Mikey.”

Ray makes a pleased little noise and shakes Mikey’s hand over the counter—which is definitely not the name Frank would have given this guy. He’s got a jawline that sharp and his name is _Mikey?_ Frank tries to inconspicuously look up at him as he picks at his boneless ribs.

“Hey, I’m Ray, and this is Frank,” says Ray in his best Customer Service voice. “What can we help you with?”

Mikey runs a hand through his short blonde hair. “I’m actually looking for a job. Do you own this place?”

Ray laughs. “No, that would be Frank. I just do his job sometimes.”

Mikey flashes a dazzling smile down at Frank where he’s leaning on the counter. “Are you hiring by chance?”

Frank blinks, stilling his hand in the warm carton. “Can you work a register?”

“Better than I’d like to admit.”

“Do you like music? And movies?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Alright.” Frank smiles at him and shrugs. “When can you start?” Hopefully Brian doesn’t mind; they haven’t hired anyone since the last time, when Frank hired that girl who liked to shoot up in the back room. That was a mess and a half.

Mikey finally thrusts his hand out in Frank’s direction. “Whenever you want me. But if it’s not too much of a pain in the ass, I prefer night shifts.”

Frank grabs his hand and nods. “Fine with me, man.”

Something extra weird happens then. The second their hands touch, the lights in the shop flicker and the radio cuts out for a moment, and a fucking _violent_ chill runs all the way up Frank’s arm and down his spine and stays there.

But no one seems to notice whatever the fuck just happened, so he just finishes his awkwardly long handshake with Mikey and says, clearing his throat, “Well.” He feels like he’s _buzzing_ all of a sudden. Like head-to-toe pins and needles. “Welcome to In The Groove Records.”

Ray laughs and does a half-hearted cheer and Mikey looks like a little kid on Christmas when he says, “Thanks, man, I really appreciate it. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to break out the resume again.”

Frank waves him off with a wonky smile. He tries to pull his eyes off Mikey’s face, but he finds he can’t. Like they’re drawn there, or something. _He’s hot, I guess, but not_ that _hot._ Do city boys really have that much of an effect on him?

“Where are you from, Mikey?” Ray asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around.”

Mikey slips his black-out sunglasses back on his long, thin nose. “Born and raised right here in Jersey. My brother and I were living down the Shore for a while but we missed the north, so we headed back up here, you know?”

Not a city boy then. Interesting.

Ray nods so hard his hair bounces along with him. “Yeah, sure. The Shore can get kinda sucky after a while. Does your brother need a job too?”

It’s a lighthearted question, sort of a joke judging by the way Ray asked, but Mikey gets all serious. If Frank wasn’t so close to the guy he wouldn’t have noticed the tic in his jaw. “Nah, he’s sick, so he’s just doing something seasonal. We’re both kind of big on Halloween, so it’s a losing battle telling him to stay home this time of year.”

“Me too,” Frank offers uselessly, his mouth feeling like it belongs to someone else. _What the hell is wrong with him?_

“Well,” Mikey says eventually, picking up a pen from the counter and writing his number on the legal pad in an empty corner. “I’ll leave you to your lunch.”

“Oh, do you want some?” Ray asks just as Mikey’s stepping away from the counter, his hands back in his pockets. “We’ve definitely got enough here.”

Mikey frowns a little bit. “No, thanks, I’ve got a pretty strict diet.”

“You sure?”

“A hundred percent.”

“See you tomorrow then? Four o’clock?” Frank asks, shaking out his hands casually. Either there’s seriously something wrong with those ribs, or he’s allergic to this Mikey kid.

“Four is when the closing shift starts,” Ray offers. “Is that too early for you?”

Mikey shakes his head, smiling. “That’s fine. See you at four.” And with one last glance back at them, he’s gone.

The minute he’s out of the shop, Frank goes back to feeling normal; his blood stops feeling like static in his veins. He sucks in a breath and shakes out his hands again for good measure.

“You feeling okay, Frankie?” Ray asks with those worried mother hen eyes of his, but Frank doesn’t get a chance to answer him before Grace is catapulting herself up to the counter with her VHS tape.

“Well _that_ was embarassing as fuck.”

Ray tosses her a fortune cookie from the bottom of the paper bag and she shoves it in the pocket of her jean jacket. In exchange she slides over a five dollar bill that Ray sticks in the register.

“Even _I’m_ not that bad with cute boys,” she goes on.

“What?”

Ray laughs, carefully dumping some sticky white rice into his container of chicken noodle soup. “That is _not_ how Frank flirts. Trust me, I’ve seen it. It’s worse.”

_“Hey—”_

“You were looking at that guy like he was the second coming of Jesus!” she squawks, and makes a face that Frank assumes is supposed to be what he looked like: mouth hanging open and eyes all wide and moony. He definitely didn’t look like that. _Yeesh._

“I’m not afraid to hit a kid,” he tells her seriously.

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. At least you got his number!”

She skips out of the shop and Frank is stuck staring at the door in disbelief. The balls on kids today!

“You were acting kind of off,” Ray says and Frank whips his head around at him. Ray stuffs his mouth full of soup, his eyebrows raised.

Frank sputters a little because he doesn’t know what to _say,_ which definitely doesn’t help his case. “He— It wasn’t like that! I swear! He’s not even my type, _damn.”_

“Then, what? Are you constipated or something?”

“Jesus Christ, Toro.”

“It’s an honest question! You were being weird.”

Frank shrugs heavily and digs into a carton of sweet and sour chicken next, foregoing the sauce, which is looming at the edge of the counter like a container of neon blood. “I don’t know, man. I _felt_ weird.”

“What do you mean?”

Frank shrugs again. “I felt all…buzzy. Or something. Do I have a fever?”

Ray reaches out and presses the back of his hand to Frank’s forehead, but he shakes his head. “You feel fine to me.”

“Huh.” Frank stares down at his chicken. “Whatever, Halloween’s always a weird time. I swear I’m more subjected to weird shit since it’s my birthday.”

“Oh! That reminds me—”

Ray pulls out two long, glossy tickets from his back pocket and sets them on the counter. Frank picks one up with greasy fingers. They’re black with orange and purple polka dots and little white clip-art ghosts. They look like something Frank would have made in his high school graphic design class.

“The manager at that new haunted house really liked the video I shot for them and they’re gonna air it on a local channel tonight.”

Frank looks up from the tickets to see Ray as red as the sweet and sour sauce he refuses to touch. He looks proud as hell.

“Hey, man, that’s fucking awesome! Congrats, seriously. That’s…what? The third thing you got on TV?”

“Third, yeah.” Ray takes one of the tickets and sticks it back in his pocket. “Still hoping I can get the one for the shop on TV too.”

“Wait,” Frank says, “you got, like, paid, right? Like, this isn’t all they gave you?”

Ray snorts and shakes his head. The bells jingle again and they both look over to see Rob and Jessie from the thrift store down the block coming in still in their work smocks. Frank and Ray wave to them and turn back to each other.

“I got a check too, Frankie. Which is safely in the bank. The tickets are just a bonus. They were giving a couple out for opening night.”

“Sick,” Frank says and looks back down at the ticket he’s still holding. _“Opening night,”_ he reads, _“Friday, October 16th. Seven-thirty._ Man, I haven’t been to one of these fucking things in forever.”

“Me neither. I feel like we haven’t done anything fun together in forever either.” Ray reaches over and steals one of the pieces of chicken from the carton Frank’s working his way through and dips it in his soup.

“What?” Frank asks, mouth full. He can already tell he’s gonna regret eating this shit in the morning. It may not be as bad as the pizza place across the street, but he _never_ does good with takeout. “That manor we went to last weekend was super fun. I still can’t believe the tour was two hours long.”

Ray stares out into space for a second, then says, “Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot about that because they wouldn’t let us film inside. Huh.”

“We do a lot of fun stuff, man.”

“I know, but, like, I always have my camera with me. Sometimes I just feel like it’s ingenuine.”

“Are you bringing your camera to the haunted house?”

Ray considers it, making a face that looks like he just stepped in dog shit. “I didn’t _want to_ but I promised my viewers a walkthrough when they uploaded the ad to their Facebook.”

“So? Wear your GoPro. Hands-free fun.” Frank waves his hands and Ray laughs at him.

“You know, contrary to popular belief, you’re not as dumb as you look.”

Frank throws his head back in a super obnoxious laugh that makes Ray shush him even though Rob and Jessie don’t give a fuck, then Frank throws a fortune cookie at him. “Fuck you.”

Ray manages to catch the cookie like the suave bastard he is and pops the plastic open. He cracks the cookie in half and pulls out the fortune inside. _“A new business venture is on the horizon.”_ He frowns. “Hm. Interesting. You do one.”

Frank grabs one of the cookies from the pile (Ray always asks for a fuckton of fortune cookies; it’s one of the only reasons Frank keeps him around) and tears it open. He smashes the cookie against the counter with the flat of his hand and plucks out the crumpled fortune. He clears his throat dramatically before reading it. _“Love conquers all.”_ Frank snorts. “Gay rights. Hell yeah, Golden Chopsticks.”

Ray grabs another cookie and opens it up in his clean little civilized way. _“Next full moon brings an enchanting evening._ _Oh,_ Halloween is a full moon. And your birthday! Oh, shit, maybe that is why you were feeling weird.”

Frank sweeps a bunch of crumbs off the counter into his hand and knocks them back; most of them land on his shirt. “Makes sense, even though it’s ominous as hell. Whatever, my turn.”

He Hulk smashes the last fortune cookie, making Ray do one of those _Frankieee_ things.

 _“Be on the lookout for coming events; they cast their shadow beforehand._ That one’s even worse!”

“I’m getting mixed signals from our fortune cookies,” Ray says, frowning.

“It sounds like you’re gonna get a new job or something on Halloween, and I’m gonna…fall in love? Or, like, something creepy’s gonna happen and whoever I fall in love with is gonna swoop in and save the day.” He shrugs. “Whatever, I’ll drink to that. Pass me my soda.”

Ray grabs Frank’s warm, severely flat bottle of Sprite from under the counter and hands it to him. Frank takes a swig and swishes it around in his mouth before swallowing.

“I’m going to regret eating this shit. Stop being my enabler, Toro, I’m gonna wake up with the Hershey squirts tomorrow. That’s probably another reason I felt weird.”

“We only eat out to celebrate. And please don’t say _Hershey squirts,_ you sound like my Grandma.”

“Well we celebrate a lot then.”

“I guess so,” Ray says, wrinkling his nose down at his container of soup.

“One of these days I’ll finally bite the bullet and go full veg for the sake of my shitty-ass digestive system,” Frank plucks another mini rib from the carton and pops it in his mouth, “but today is once again not that day.”

  
  
  


Frank doesn’t wake up with the Hershey squirts, but he does wake up with one hell of a stomachache and a sick case of nausea on top of it, which makes him knock back Tums for breakfast like his life depends on it. It definitely does, though.

Ray decides to drive him to the shop so he doesn’t have to walk all the way there feeling like shit, and he looks like a dog that pissed all over the carpet the whole time.

“I’m sure Brian won’t mind opening again, Frankie.”

Frank curls up against the passenger door and groans; his intestines are trying to turn themselves into a pretzel. “I’m done asking him to cover me just because my body fucking hates me. What’s new.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I can handle sitting around all day, Toro. Believe it or not.”

Ray shuts up the rest of the way there.

When they pull up to the shop, Frank gets out with the speed of an old man, cradling his bottles of ginger ale and Tums against him as he pulls his keys from his pocket. When he gets on the other side of the car, Ray is already standing by the door with his backpack.

“What’re you doing?”

Ray lifts the backpack a little. “I’m gonna edit here.”

That’s Ray-speak for _I feel bad so I’m going to follow you around like a puppy for the rest of the day._ Which, fine. Frank wouldn’t say it, but he was kind of hoping Ray would stay for a while anyway. He hates being alone when he feels like hot garbage.

“Whatever.”

Which is Frank Is Sick-speak for _Thanks, man. You’re a good friend._

Ray drops his bag behind the counter and sets off to straighten up the shop before opening, which makes Frank feel just a little better while he counts the till. When the radio’s on and the sign on the door is flipped around, Ray sets up his laptop at the counter and Frank bundles himself up in a sweatshirt he left in the back room and heads outside.

“Morning, gang,” he says to the pumpkins lining the front of the shop. He’s surprised no jerk-off kids smashed them all yet; he worked hard on these fuckers.

Frank picks up the one he was working on yesterday and sits down on the freezing sidewalk. He rolls his sleeves up and fishes the carving tools from the bottom of the hollowed-out pumpkin and gets to work on what he hopes is going to be a bat.

Before Frank knows it, though, he’s waking up with Ray looming over him, and his stomach feels a bit better.

“Hungry yet? You didn’t eat breakfast.”

Frank blinks up at him, then looks down at his half-done jack-o’-lantern and his bloody finger. His bloody—?

“Woah, what the hell did you do?”

Ray crouches down and grabs Frank’s hand. The X-Acto knife is sitting in his lap and he picks it up carefully and throws it inside the pumpkin. His pointer finger is sliced open and bleeding, but that seems to be the only part of him he cut, thankfully. Ray helps him to his feet and checks out his arms with a concerned pinch between his brows. He hates when Frank calls him a mother hen, but that’s exactly what he is. Like, all the time. Frank would probably be dead without him.

“I wish you would use those shitty plastic tools like everyone else,” he says, herding Frank into the shop where it’s nice and toasty. He shivers inside his sweatshirt and pushes his hood down with the hand that isn’t being squeezed to death by his best friend.

“I’m an _artiste,”_ he says, yawning.

“No, you’re a hazard.”

They go into the back of the shop, which doubles as a stockroom _and_ a breakroom and Ray tugs him over to the corner where they have their ratty secondhand couch and pushes him down into it. While Ray is digging around in the drawer on the little table they keep the microwave on, Frank’s stomach growls. Nice, he doesn’t feel like dogshit anymore. He downs the rest of his ginger ale and chews on another Tums just in case.

Ray turns back with a Band-Aid and an antiseptic wipe, which he tears open with his teeth, and sits on the arm of the couch. Frank holds his hand out palm up on Ray’s thigh and yawns again.

“What happened to the first aid kit?” he asks while he wipes the blood from Frank’s finger. It only stings a little bit.

“We were always losing it, so Brian dumped everything into the drawer and got rid of the box. Actually, I think he keeps spare needles in it under the counter.”

Ray shakes his head and wraps Frank’s finger up in the Band-Aid.

“Kiss it?” Frank asks, fluttering his eyelashes and pouting.

He rolls his eyes and smacks Frank’s hand instead before standing up and throwing the garbage out in the overflowing trash can. “Come on.”

Back out in the shop, which is still empty, Ray slaps his laptop closed and pulls on his jacket.

“I’m gonna run home and grab those leftovers from dinner. Are you gonna be okay? How are you feeling?”

Frank pats his stomach. “Good as new. My impromptu nap on the sidewalk cured me, praise God.”

Ray grins and says warmly, “I’m glad. I’ll be back soon, okay?”

“Yeah, drive safe. Oh, hey—”

Ray turns around, holding the door open and looking at him expectantly.

Frank pulls out his wallet and hands him some cash. “Can you stop at Starbucks?”

“Man, I hate how you pay for everything in cash.” Ray snatches the money from him and stuffs it in his pocket. “Your credit score is only gonna get worse, you know.”

“Comes from a childhood spent at garage sales and flea markets, baby.”

Ray rolls his eyes for the millionth time and leaves the shop.

  
  
  


The rest of the day is as dead as the morning, so dead that Frank starts nodding off again outside after he and Ray eat lunch when he’s trying to finally finish his last jack-o’-lantern, and Ray tells him to go in the back to take a nap before he cuts himself again or catches pneumonia or something. Frank’ll never turn down a nap, especially when he’s still not feeling a hundred percent, so he curls up on the couch and passes the fuck out.

He wakes up to his phone ringing, and when Frank looks at the screen he sees _Mama Mia_ and the time telling him it’s almost 3:30 already _._ He sends his mom’s call to voicemail and heads out of the back room to help Ray with the early after-work rush.

There’s a group of middle schoolers huddled around the Rock bin, their backpacks still on and littered with goofy keychains and pins, a man in a suit gazing at the DVDs with a bluetooth in his ear, and two girls Frank’s age flipping through the bin of horror movie soundtracks that Brian put together yesterday morning and very obviously flirting with each other.

The steady business keeps them so busy that Frank doesn’t realize it’s the end of his shift until Brian’s coming in with his megawatt smile and a Dunkin’ cup.

“Hey, Schechter!” calls the guy that’s been looking through the VHS tapes for the last fifteen minutes. Brian waves at him and Frank watches him nod to Ray.

“Are you going to let me pay you today, Toro?”

Ray shakes his head seriously as he bags up a lady’s haul of BritPop 8-tracks. “Hell, no. I help out of the goodness of my heart.”

Brian waves him off and turns away from the counter, coming over to Frank. “Hey man, how’s it going?” He slaps Frank on the back. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” Frank laughs and punches him in the arm in return. “I was kind of sick this morning, but I’m fine now.” He wrinkles his nose at Brian’s coffee. “I still can’t believe you drink that shit.”

Brian’s eyes almost pop out of his head. “Okay, Mr. _Grande Mocha Frappu-venti Hoohah.”_ He takes a pointed sip from his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. “Some of us like the classic stuff.”

Frank shakes his head and puts down the album he was holding. “Fuckin’ boomer. I’m surprised you don’t get black coffee from Mickey Dee’s.”

Brian makes a face and points at Frank. “Now _that’s_ blasphemy. And who the fuck are you calling a boomer? You know what? Let’s not get into that. Is the new guy here yet?”

“No, but he should be soon.”

“Hey, Mikey!”

They turn around to find Mikey The New Guy heading to the counter, already smiling at Ray.

Frank completely forgot about the weird feeling he got yesterday, decided Ray was right and it was just because of the upcoming full moon or the takeout or whatever, but here the guy is again, and Frank’s entire body is tingling like someone flipped a switch in him.

“Hey, Bri, this is Mikey,” Ray introduces when they all convene at the counter.

Brian shakes Mikey’s hand enthusiastically and Frank watches his face closely to see if he’s feeling it too. But he just looks pleasantly surprised, and Ray doesn’t seem to notice it either. It’s gotta just be the full moon. Even though it’s in, like, three weeks.

“Hi, Mikey Way,” Mikey says smoothly.

 _“Mikeyway?_ Is that one word?” Brian jokes, and Ray shakes his head. “Man, you got one hell of a grip on you. You ever play baseball?”

Mikey smiles politely and says simply, “No.” Then his eyes find Frank’s and Frank feels a chill run through him, amplifying that tingling feeling.

He remembers out of nowhere that one time when he was a kid when he stuck a fork in the socket behind the couch because his mom specifically told him _not_ to, and how a shock ran up his arm and his fingertips turned black.

“I, uh, like the hat,” Frank says stupidly.

Mikey touches his beanie absently, then takes his sunglasses off. “Thanks.”

Frank looks down at his hands. His fingers aren’t singed, but he definitely feels that same sort of current going through him now. Except instead of it being in his arm, he feels it in his whole body.

When he looks back up he finds Mikey looking at him strangely, like he knows something about him that Frank doesn’t know that he knows. Another shiver goes through him.

“Are you okay?” Mikey asks, looking genuinely concerned. _Does he—_ “Sorry, you just look kind of pale and I don’t want to bring anything home to my brother.”

Frank laughs awkwardly. “Yeah, yeah! I’m fine.” _I think._

“Brother?” Brian says excitedly, sipping his coffee. He holds his caffeine like Frank holds his liquor. “Does he need a job too? I wouldn’t mind a couple new hands for the holidays.”

“I already tried that yesterday, Bri,” Ray says.

Now Mikey is squinting at his hand. “You good?” Frank asks him slowly.

Mikey flicks his eyes up to Frank’s face. “What?”

Frank wiggles his finger with the Band-Aid on it like Danny in _The Shining._ “If you’re worried about, like, germs, or whatever—”

Mikey shakes his head and smiles almost mechanically. “Sorry, no, you’re good. I just hate blood.”

“Oh, okay.” Frank clears his throat. The base of his skull is tingling like when Ray makes him watch those creepy ASMR videos.

“Well, uh, Brian’s gonna show you the ropes. He’s the actual boss around here.”

Brian makes a _pfft_ sound and grabs Mikey by one bony shoulder. “Only on paper, man. Come on, I’ll show you the back.”

“Alright,” Mikey says, letting himself be pulled away. “It was cool seeing you guys again.”

“You too!” Ray calls.

Frank gives a weak wave, still frowning. When he and Ray are out in the car and putting their seatbelts on, Frank notices the tingling is gone almost immediately. He shakes another Tums into his hand and chews it thoughtfully.

“I’m pretty sure Mikey is the one making me feel weird. It only happens around him. I noticed.”

Ray starts the car. “Oh. Is it a bad feeling then? Does he give off bad vibes or something?”

“No.” Frank shakes his head. “It’s like— tingling?”

“You said you felt _buzzy_ yesterday.”

“Yeah, like when you get a chill, but it doesn’t go away.”

“Are your socks too tight?” Ray asks. “Because it just sounds like bad circulation, Frankie.”

Frank can’t help but laugh. “No, it’s not my _socks._ I don’t know, I’m always bad with, like, intuition. Maybe Mikey’s gonna steal from the register or something.”

Ray sucks in a breath and his eyes go a little wide. “Oh, shit, _yeah._ My intuition’s way better than yours, but I didn’t feel that way?”

Frank huffs softly. “Which is why this is weird.”

“Well, we’ll keep an eye on him. Wanna grab something for dinner before we head to the haunted house? I’m craving fish, I think.”

“Hell yeah, man, me too.”

They’ll keep an eye on Mikey Way. Everything’s _fine._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y’all know the drill! don’t be afraid to drop a dime with any sort of comments or criticisms you may have, i’m happy to hear anything you might have to say!!
> 
> chapters will be once a week At Most, but let’s be honest i am very impatient so SMASH that subscribe button to get notifs when new chapters go up :D
> 
> [my twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydarIing)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> told y’all i couldn’t wait a week lmfao
> 
> updated the tags so check those out!
> 
> chapter dedicated to [maya <3](https://mobile.twitter.com/gothpimpfrank)
> 
> enter: gerard.......

The haunted house is set up in an athletic club that Frank used to go to with his dad when they would hold their seasonal indoor flea market, but instead of walking in to a couple of old ladies sitting at a white folding table with their little lockbox waiting to take your one dollar admission, there’s a big burly guy with his face painted like a skeleton’s standing just inside the doors when it’s their turn to go in. They can’t see much beyond him; the entire tiny lobby is pitch-black save for the spotlight the ticket-taker guy is standing under and the runway lights that lead into the main room.

“Tickets?” the guy grumbles when a small group of teenagers disappear into the dark room ahead of them, the runway lights lighting up their shoes. Beyond the vague noises and muffled music Frank can hear shouting from other guests.

They hand him their glossy tickets and they’re let past. They go into the room single file. The lights are so dim in here it almost makes Frank’s eyes hurt, and the flashing strobe lights in every corner definitely don’t help. Or the fog machines. Jesus Christ, at least the tickets were free.

Ray tugs on his sleeve. “It’s pretty indie, so don’t get your hopes up too much.”

Frank snorts. “You definitely made it look cooler than it is, that’s for sure. If we don’t get scared at least we’ll have a good laugh.”

A series of bright red spotlights flicker on suddenly, making the room look like a doomsday bunker. Somewhere at the other end of the room a girl shrieks, followed by laughter. Frank pretty much knows the layout of this building like the back of his own hand, but they set up fake walls to make some sort of maze. Huh. Okay.

Ray puts his hands on his hips. He looks creepy as hell in this lighting, but the GoPro strapped to his chest makes it kind of funny. He looks at Frank and shrugs. Frank shrugs back and they enter the maze.

It’s actually kind of fun; every now and then the walls will close in on them and they have to shimmy through like crabs, or they’ll make a wrong turn and come to a dead end that has an actor covered in blood and prosthetics waiting for them. Things fall from the ceiling and tickle their heads, hands reach out from fake doors and trick picture frames. Sound effects louder than fucking bombs scare the shit out of them around every corner and the lights flash every color of the rainbow.

When they finally reach the end of the maze, stepping around a dummy hanging from the rafters by his own rubber intestines, the doorway into the next room has _The Crypt_ painted on a wooden sign in dripping red over it. Frank remembers this room as the one that always had the best vinyl vendors, but of course, like the main room, it’s unrecognizable when they go in. It looks like a catacomb now, like those creepy ones under Paris he saw in _As Above, So Below._ The flickering lights look like lightning, and from the hidden speakers comes the sounds of thunder and whistling wind. There’s nothing much to The Crypt considering the room was so small to begin with, just fake cobwebs and piles of bones and mysterious wooden cargo crates.

One of the crates explodes the further into the room they go, and out flies a hoard of rubber bats on wires, and they soar past Frank and Ray and disappear somewhere in the dark edges of the room. Frank almost shits his pants, and Ray yells, but when the bats are gone they both double over laughing.

“Oh man,” Ray says hoarsely.

Frank shakes his head directly at the camera strapped to Ray’s chest. “That was fucked up,” he tells his viewers.

“I think the exit’s over there.” Ray points at the other end of the room, and Frank sees the glowing red doorway with even more fog rolling out of it. This shit seems too good to be true. Where are the other jumpscares?

They start walking, cautiously, because they’ve both seen enough horror movies to know something else is gonna jump out at them. And then there’s this loud rumble that’s different from the artificial thunder. It sounds like rock echoing, like big slabs of concrete being dragged against each other.

“Oh boy,” Ray murmurs almost in Frank’s ear.

Frank sees it then: a gap in the wall by the exit that’s slowly growing bigger. His stomach twists for no good reason, and he kind of wishes he didn’t eat anything before they came here.

They stand there in the middle of a huge rusty blood stain and watch as a sickly white hand peeks out of the crack in the fake concrete wall. There’s a scream in the next room and a huge, booming voice says through the speakers around them, “Who’s there?”

“Oh man,” Ray says, and Frank bites his lip to keep from nervous laughing. “Are we supposed to say something? They didn’t tell me about this room when I came and filmed, I don’t think it was finished.”

“What?” Frank almost shouts, because between the sound effects and the creepy piano music that just started up out of nowhere, he can barely hear himself think.

The wall moves some more, the pitch-black crack growing even bigger, and a pale face pops out that matches the hand. White skin splashed with fake blood that matches red contacts, and the lights glint off sharp fangs.

The guy in the creepy fake wall tomb smiles like the Cheshire cat and sticks his head out a little more, as slow as a sloth. His black hair is slicked back, and while he doesn’t exactly have a sharp jawline, he’s all angles; his nose is as pointy as his fangs.

He’s kind of fucking hot, even though the lighting in here sucks.

“Welcome,” Dracula says out of the corner of his mouth and runs his tongue over his kitten-sized teeth. Somehow Frank and Ray had drifted closer and they didn’t even realize it. “You smell delicious.”

And Frank _giggles,_ because he’s nothing if not a human disaster.

Dracula flicks his bright red eyes to Frank and his venomous sneer seems to falter a little (though that might just be Frank’s gay imagination). There’s another rumble of thunder and Dracula growls like he’s about to burst out of his tomb like the Kool-Aid Man and Ray grabs Frank’s hand and pulls him past the tomb and through the exit.

They end up in a long hallway that’s nothing more than a hallway, decorated in cobwebs and creepy paintings and blood splatters, and Ray lets go of Frank’s hand.

“That was fun!” he says, laughing a little breathlessly. Frank’s heart is thudding in his chest, and he knows it’s not because of, well, the haunted house. “The Crypt was pretty creepy. I don’t know why, it was just a guy in the wall.”

“Yeah,” Frank says, sounding like a dope. “He was hot.”

Ray lets out a startled laugh and looks over at Frank. “I’m definitely keeping that in.”

The _GoPro._ Fuck, Frank is such an embarrassment. He runs a hand down his face. The guy was covered in makeup and he could barely even _see_ him, but Frank’s mouth is still watering. There’s something about creatures of the night that just really get him going, what can he say? Must be a born-on-Halloween thing.

“Have I come out on your channel yet?” Frank asks. “You’re out, right?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m out. And I’m pretty sure you’ve talked about fucking guys on camera before.”

“Okay cool. Don’t wanna shock them.”

“They’d probably all agree with you anyway. Vampires are pretty sexy.”

They push through the exit and end up in the parking lot behind the building.

“That’s the truest thing you’ve ever said, Toro. Did you _see_ the guy? I wouldn’t mind him sucking my blood.”

Frank can’t see Ray’s face behind his curtain of hair while he shuts off the GoPro and the fact that it’s dark as sin out, but he knows he’s probably rolling his eyes at him. “I think you need to have a quiet night alone with _Interview with the Vampire.”_

Frank scratches at the back of his neck, his ears hot and legs the consistency of Jell-O. “I think you’re right.”

  
  
  


“How the fuck are we out of pasta already?” Frank asks, standing up on his tippy toes to see into the cabinet. “Didn’t we _just_ pick some up?”

“We made spaghetti the other night.”

“Fuck,” Frank says to himself. “I wanted spaghetti tonight though.”

Ray hears him though, because he has the ears of a fucking wolf. “You eat too much pasta.”

Frank continues staring into the cabinet. “I‘m an Italian with a fast metabolism. And I’m craving meat…sauce… _ugh.”_ He drops back down onto his feet. He just wants a post-jack off snack. Or meal. He always feels like a bottomless pit after he gets over a stomachache.

“What about sloppy joes?”

Frank slams the cabinet shut. _“Fuck,_ yes. Fuck, yeah, I’m running to the store, you wanna come?”

Ray has his laptop out and open when Frank looks over into the living room. “Nah, I’m gonna stay and edit the footage I just shot,” he says distractedly, his fingers flying over his keyboard and doing things Frank can’t even comprehend. He looks up suddenly. “Oh, can you pick up some Ben & Jerry’s?”

Frank scoffs and turns to the door. _“Can I pick up some Ben & Jerry’s… _ Does a bear shit in the woods?”

Frank slips his shoes on and leaves the apartment while Ray is still laughing.

He practically runs through the store, he’s so hungry, and when he leaves he actually does run because it’s cold as balls out and he forgot to bring a jacket and if he gets sick, like _actually_ sick, he knows at least two people who will murder him for it.

He’s almost home, breath fogging the air in front of him and nose like an icicle, when the person that’s been going the same way as him for the last couple of minutes stops suddenly up ahead and puts a hand out on a nearby tree. They look like they’re about to pass out or something.

Concern like a stone in the pit of Frank’s still-fragile stomach, he hurries to catch up with them.

“Hey, man, you okay?” he asks, putting a hand on their shoulder and walking around to see their face. A chill runs down Frank’s spine, and he really wishes he was as bundled up as this person.

Behind a rat’s nest of black hair and a huge scarf that hides half his face is Dracula from the haunted house, of all fucking people. Frank reels back, letting his hand slip off his shoulder. His stomach jumps. _I thought the haunted house was open until midnight…?_

“Oh shit. You.”

Dracula looks up finally, replacing his hand on the tree with his whole body as he leans against it. Recognition flashes through his eyes, and Frank sees they’re not actually red _(duh),_ but a really sick shade of hazel. Which isn’t exactly a _shade,_ but. He doesn’t have his contacts in anymore, but when the monstrous scarf shifts, Frank sees he does still have his fangs in.

“Oh.”

He’s also still white as fuck, and Frank realizes it’s not makeup; he must just be that pale. “Are you okay?” he asks again, sort of breathlessly. This has to be Fate saying loud and clear, _I’m putting the hot vampire right in front of you, so don’t fuck it up._

The guy tries to smile, but it comes out looking more like a grimace than anything. “I’m alright, thanks for asking.”

Frank bites his tongue, _hard._ His voice is even hot without the surround sound, what the fuck. It’s not as menacing as he was making it before, it’s sort of airy and nasally and really sweet. “You sure? You don’t look alright. I mean— You look good! But. You do seem like you feel…bad.”

Frank is going to kill himself. He’s going to go home and drown himself in the toilet or something.

The guy looks at him steadily, shadows like bruises beneath his eyes. “I’m alright,” he says again. “I should’ve eaten before work, then I wouldn’t have had to leave early.”

He sucks in a breath and pushes off the tree and past Frank. Frank watches him wobble a couple of steps before he has to stop again, arms hanging at his sides. Then he starts back up and Frank decides to walk with him. He knows _sick_ when he sees it, and this guy looks one strong breeze away from falling over.

“I’ve got, uh, cookies. If you want one.” He lifts his grocery bags a little.

The guy looks at him like he’s surprised Frank is still there, but faces forward again without even looking at the bags. “Diabetic.”

“Oh, okay. I’ve got buns?”

Thank God Ray wasn’t here to hear _that_ one.

“Celiac.”

Frank hums. Damn, and he thought _he_ had shitty health.

He decides to keep walking with the guy, who’s all hunched in on himself with his face almost completely hidden by his scarf. Frank isn’t usually this nice, especially to strangers in the middle of the night (albeit how hot they are), but he doesn’t want the guy to go into, like, _shock_ or something. That can happen to diabetics, right?

Also, you know, he doesn’t want to disappoint _Fate._

He stops suddenly, and Frank stops with him. He looks shifty, and if it’s possible for him to get any paler, he definitely does. “Why are you following me?”

 _Shit,_ he actually sounds kind of scary. Scarier than he did at the haunted house, at least. Frank takes a step back on instinct; he _hates_ walking around at night. It would be just his luck that the hot vampire is a serial killer.

“Sorry, you, uh— Just trying to be a good samaritan.”

The guy lets his shoulders drop a little from where they were up around his ears, and his face softens the tiniest bit. He looks at Frank in wonder then, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You don’t have to do that. I said I’ll be fine.”

Frank snorts, shifting the weight of the bags in his hands. “Yeah, and then I’ll read on Twitter in the morning that they found a dead vampire on the sidewalk outside of,” he looks up at the dark store they’re standing in front of, “GameStop.”  
When he looks back at the guy, he looks shifty again. Suspicious, or scared, Frank doesn’t know. He’s never been good at reading people’s faces. “Are you gonna pass out or something? Maybe you should sit down.”

“Vampire?” he says in a strange voice.

Frank lifts a hand with one of the bags hanging from the crook of his elbow and taps his teeth. “Forgot to take your fangs out, man.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth, frowning. He relaxes again and says, “Oh, right. Well.”

Frank huffs a laugh, and it comes out as a plume of fog. _Fuck,_ it’s cold. “So is it cool if I walk you home? Or wherever you’re going?”

The guy looks at him a second longer, looking kind of torn, and without a word just starts walking again. Frank takes that as an invitation to stay, so he says, “I’m Frank. I guess we didn’t exactly get to meet at the haunted house. Which was cool! By the way. Super fun.”

Yeah, he’s really glad Ray isn’t here.

The guy doesn’t even spare him a glance when he says, reluctantly and kind of quiet, “Gerard.”

Frank does _not_ laugh at that. What is with these guys he’s meeting having stupid-ass names that don’t match them? Maybe him and Mikey Way know each other.

“Sorry, I’m not very social,” Gerard tells him when they’ve been walking in semi-awkward silence for a while.

Frank shrugs. “It’s cool. I hate talking when I feel like shit too. I’ll just,” he shivers, “enjoy this beautiful night.”

He sees Gerard look over at him from the corner of his eye. “Aren’t you cold?”

“A little.” He raises his eyebrows at Gerard’s getup. “You?”

Gerard looks down at himself. “I run cold. This is my place.”

Frank almost trips over his own feet. Not Gerard though, he comes to a graceful stop, looking up at the apartment complex Frank had no idea they were coming up to.

“Oh, okay. Uh,” Frank sticks out a slightly shaking hand and Gerard looks down at it like he has no idea what it is, “it was cool meeting you.”

Tentatively, like he’s a stray dog, Gerard takes a gloved hand out of his pocket, and they shake. Frank’s cheeks go all warm because he’s stupid.

“Thank you, Frank,” Gerard says, sticking his hand back in his pocket. His name sounds goofy coming from him with those fake fangs.

And, silent as a ghost but not as graceful, he disappears inside the building.

Frank stands on the sidewalk under a flickering street lamp until he feels like his eyeballs are going to freeze inside his skull. Then he turns around and heads for home.

Maybe he’ll watch _Interview with the Vampire_ again. Two times in one night isn’t that bad, right?

  
  
  


Frank ends up not being able to stop thinking about Gerard at all while he’s at work the next day. He keeps thinking about his pointy little nose and the way he talks out of the corner of his mouth like a stroke victim and feels all warm and gooey inside, like he’s fifteen again. He definitely hasn’t felt warm and gooey since high school. Ray gave him shit for it when he got home, because of course. He was barely able to eat his sloppy joe in peace without hearing _“Oooh, you’re blushing!”_ every two fucking seconds. So what if he was blushing. Grown-ass men are allowed to _blush._

Every once in a while he thinks about bringing it up to Mikey, just some casual gossip to break the ice, but alongside the warm and gooey feeling, he’s also buzzing again. And not in the British way. So naturally that turns him off to talking about his gay feelings to his new co-worker. He’s not entirely sure he trusts the guy yet anyway.

Although he doesn’t seem like the kind to steal from the register—he’s good with customers and a super fast learner—so who knows. Good people can have bad vibes, right?

(He’ll double check the register in the morning.)

Frank flips the sign on the door around at closing time and straightens up while Mikey balances the till, and at 10:30 Ray pulls up in front of the shop to pick him up.

“See ya.” Mikey waves as Frank’s locking the doors, and Frank watches him cross the street and head for a Volkswagen _bus,_ of all fucking cars. Could that be considered suspicious? It could definitely be considered suspicious; what twenty-something owns a mint VW bus like it’s 1973?

“Hey, man,” Ray says when Frank hops in, but Frank is too busy watching Mikey pull away in his retro Volkswagen. Ray looks behind them. “Sick car. Did he do anything sketchy today?”

Frank looks back at him when Mikey’s gone, rubbing his hands on his thighs to warm them up. “No, he seems cool.” And he _was._ Which is kind of disappointing, actually. “I still felt all tingly and weird though.”

Ray shrugs and Frank shrugs back. Then they laugh because Frank is ridiculous and he loves to worry about pointless shit. Maybe he’ll go get a physical or something. He’s probably overdue for one; he’ll bet a hundred bucks that’s what his mom was calling him about yesterday, who he still hasn’t called back.

“Where to? Home?”

And Frank’s going to get even more ridiculous because while he was working, he came to a conclusion.

“Haunted house. I’m gonna ask Gerard out.”

“Dracula? The guy you walked home last night? Do you even know what _time_ it is?”

 _“Yes._ I’m just gonna stop in and ask him,” he says simply. “You can wait outside.”

Ray rolls his eyes again but heads in the opposite direction of their apartment.

  
  
  


The haunted house is way more crowded tonight than it was last night, and when Frank pays the five bucks to get in, he enters the maze with a couple of teenagers he vaguely recognizes from around. They run ahead of him into the fake fog and darkness, laughing like they don’t have a care in the world. Like they didn’t come here with an agenda. Frank resists the urge to run along with them because he doesn’t want to seem like a _total_ creep; showing up at Gerard’s place of employment in the middle of the night is bad enough. What is he _doing_ here? He’s definitely certifiable. Now he knows why gays were sent to jail back in the day.

Knowing where all the jumpscares are this time makes it easier to get through the maze though, and Frank laughs just like those teenagers when there’s an ear-splitting sound effect from a hidden speaker or something drops from the ceiling an inch in front of his face or someone creeps out of their hiding place to grab the back of his jacket, even though he’s pretty sure the actors aren’t supposed to touch you if you didn’t sign some sort of consent form.

When he finally makes it out of the maze and into _The Crypt,_ thunder cracks and someone screams on the other side of the room. Frank steps over the piles of cotton cobwebs and does _not_ flinch when the lid of that cargo crate bursts open and out flies the rubber bats. He didn’t fall for that one again, no way.

Okay, maybe this place isn’t as shitty as he thought it was. He’s having a blast, even on his own. Where the hell did they get their budget?

Menacing laughter starts up when Frank almost trips over that damn pile of fake bones next to the other cargo crate (that still suspiciously does nothing), and when he hears that telltale rumble of concrete sliding against concrete, he peaks around the styrofoam pillar that has mysterious runes drawn on it in fake blood and watches as a different group of teenagers than the ones he came in with cling to each other while they watch the wall start to move in front of them.

“Holy shit.”

Some guy appears at Frank’s side, and he looks pants-pissing scared. He audibly swallows when the wall moves another inch—which is saying something considering the haunting piano music and blowing wind is still loud enough to make his ears bleed—and jogs to the other end of the room with his tail between his legs. The wall suddenly jerks as the guy’s going past, and he screams, shoving the teenagers aside and disappearing out the blackhole of an exit.

Frank watches one pale hand sneak out of the crack in the wall, his stomach in knots for no good reason. Then the hand pushes the slab away more and Gerard’s now-familiar face peaks out, the strobe lights catching on his fangs and the sharp angles of his face and illuminating the fake blood dripping from his mouth.

“Oh,” comes Gerard’s amplified voice from nowhere and everywhere at once, and the teenagers warble like an excited pack of chickens, “a little midnight _snack.”_

He lets out that animalistic growl that Frank knows does _not_ actually sound like him, and the kids scream and scramble from the room like characters in Scooby-Doo. Frank makes his way over with his hands casually in his pockets and flicking his lip ring around with his tongue.

“Who’s there?” Gerard taunts when he gets closer. “Another victim? And this one with an alarming air of confidence; I don’t smell fear on you.”

“I don’t really scare easily,” Frank all but shouts over the cacophony of noises in the dark little room.

Gerard sticks his head out a little further and blinks at Frank. He pushes the slab of fake concrete aside all the way and Frank sees he’s dressed up in his tomb exactly as he thought he would be, in a three piece suit and a cape that’s the same shade of red as his eyes and the blood smeared over his face.

“Frank? What are you doing here?”

Frank’s name being broadcasted over the sound system like that makes him feel like he’s in school again and being called down to the principal’s office. He shrugs not-so-casually. “Can’t I enjoy the scares again?”

Gerard doesn’t seem convinced, obviously. Frank takes his hands out of his pockets and starts playing with his lip ring with his fingers. This was such a stupid idea, he met the guy _yesterday!_

“How— Uh, how are you? Feeling?”

Gerard visibly relaxes back into his cubby, and his face is perfectly blank. It’s almost chilling with all that blood. “Alright.”

Frank nods. Someone shouts in the next room over and an actor cackles distantly. “You were pretty sick last night so I just wanted to, you know….”

Fuck, Hell would freeze over before he stopped being such a disaster at asking guys out.

“I’m always sick,” Gerard says bluntly, running his tongue over his teeth. The fangs look huge compared to his regular teeth, and it’s way hotter than Frank would admit. “Why are you really here, Frank?”

Frank pulls his eyes away from his mouth. He doesn’t sound _mad,_ just kind of irritated. And a little wary, like he was last night. He just seems like a nervous guy all around.

Frank just decides to rip the Band-Aid off. The guy is at work, after all. “Do you wanna grab a coffee sometime?”

Gerard’s crimson eyes widen, and there’s another shout outside. Frank’s head turns towards the sound instinctively, and when he looks back at Gerard, still twisting his lip ring between his fingers, he sees him tugging the wall back into place.

“Wh—”

“I can’t, I’m sorry,” he rushes out and seals himself in, leaving Frank staring at the fake wall.

Well. That went exactly as fucking planned.

A small group of kids burst into the room behind him, whispering and laughing, and Frank turns around and breezes past them. One of them says loudly just as he’s leaving the room, “Holy shit, is _Dracula_ in there?”

Feeling stupid and ten years younger and embarassed beyond belief, Frank makes his way back through the maze and out into the lobby that’s packed with people waiting their turn to get in. The asshole at the door doesn’t even notice him pushing his way through everyone to get out.

Outside he takes a deep breath of freezing October air and tells himself he’s not going to do something stupid like _cry._ He’s not particularly upset about getting rejected (Gerard’s hot and mysterious, but what-the-fuck-ever, he’s been rejected plenty of times before), he just never really handles embarassment well. Because he’s pathetic. _Ray_ never gets all bent out of shape when _he’s_ turned down.

Speaking of Ray, there’s the _beep beep_ of a car horn and Frank opens his eyes to find him parked at the curb looking at him through the window. Frank rounds the front of the car and throws himself into the passenger seat. Ray has barely pulled away before he’s sucking on a cigarette.

“I take it it didn’t go well?” he asks, rolling Frank’s window down for him. He doesn’t bring up the _no smoking in the car_ rule and Frank could kiss him for it. “Was he straight?”

Frank scoffs, running his stupidly sweaty fingers through his hair. “How should I know? All he said was _I can’t_ and crawled back in his coffin.” He takes a hard drag on his smoke, the cherry glowing bright and angry in the dark. “God, I’m so _stupid._ Why’d you let me do that?”

Ray laughs because he’s actually a terrible friend who enjoys seeing Frank make a fool of himself and says, _“Me?_ Frankie—”

“Whatever. I’m over it.”

Frank flicks the half-smoked cig out the window and sinks down in his seat and pretends like Ray isn’t still smiling.

He’s definitely not over it. _Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see you next week! or in a couple days! aaaaaa!!!
> 
> [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydarIing)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! i hope you’re as excited as i am.......!!!
> 
> i’ve decided the alternate title for this fic, thanks to frank, is “baby’s first bloodstains”
> 
> chapter dedicated to [em <3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903483)
> 
> enjoy!

Brian calls Frank early the next morning and tells him to take the day off, and Frank thinks for a split second that it’s because he somehow found out about last night before he tells him, “I’m gonna see if Mikey is okay on his own, so I’ll take your shift today and Mikey will work by himself tonight and then I’ll have my day off tomorrow while you take my shift. Sound cool?”

“Cool,” Frank echoes, not comprehending a single thing he said, and hangs up and sleeps until noon.

The next time he wakes up, he wakes up with a nasty cough and a tuna sandwich on his nightstand. He scoffs the sandwich down sitting up in bed and wanders out into the living room with the empty plate. Ray is at the table with his laptop open in front of him and his phone pressed to his ear. When he sees Frank he says bye to whoever he’s talking to, probably one of his YouTuber friends, and hangs up.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

Frank lets out another cough and waves on his way into the kitchen. “Morning.”

Ray makes a _ blech _ sound. “I guess it’s a good thing you got today off. Where the hell did that come from?”

“How’d you know I got the day off?” Fuck, his voice sounds even worse.

“I’m friends with Brian too, you know. Seriously, are you getting sick?”

Frank rinses his plate off and drops it into the dish drain. “Probably payback for being a dumbass last night.”

Ray turns in his chair, an arm draped over the back of it. “Are you still upset over what happened with, uh, Gerard? Because there are plenty of fish in the sea, man.”

Frank snorts, and his throat feels raw and sore like he was coughing in his sleep. “Semen.”

Ray goes red in the face trying not to laugh. “I’m serious!“ And then, softer, “Did you really like him that much?”

Frank groans and sits down across from him at the table. “I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah. He was so  _ hot.” _ Frank drops his head into his arms and promptly coughs onto the table.

“I’m sorry, Frankie.”

Frank coughs again, then picks up his head because he’s getting spit on himself. “I can’t believe I did that. I feel bad now because the guy is like…seriously sick. You should’ve seen him the other night when I walked him home. He was dead on his feet.”

Ray looks up suddenly from his computer screen. “Hey, didn’t Mikey mention that his brother is sick?”

Frank’s stomach hits his toes. “Oh, fuck, you’re  _ right.” _ He groans again and then coughs into his elbow. “This can’t be a coincidence. My life isn’t that simple.”

How did he not think of that sooner? He’s so fucking stupid, on multiple levels.

Frank stares at the ceiling for a while while Ray does his YouTuber thing, rubbing at his chest with the heel of his palm. He decides he wants to at least apologize to Gerard for being too forward or whatever, and if Mikey really is his brother, then he’ll head over to the shop later to pass on the message. He’ll be vague.  _ Hey, can you tell your brother I’m sorry for last night? Thanks. _ Simple as that.

And he won’t worry about the weird heebie jeebie shit Mikey makes him feel because obviously this is more important.

  
  
  


Frank lazes around the apartment all day feeling like a kid playing hooky, going between scrolling aimlessly through Twitter and flicking through the TV and annoying Ray while he’s trying to work. It’s kinda nice, just relaxing and spending the day with his best friend. They haven’t done that in a while.

He puts on  _ Bride of Chucky _ while they eat dinner, which is his go-to sick movie no matter what time of the year it is, and when they’re cleaning up Ray tells him he’s meeting a friend.

“YouTuber friend?” Frank asks, wiping down the table and trying not to cough all over it. Man, Fate must be pissed as hell at him. He probably should go get that physical soon.

“Yeah, her name’s Kendall. We’ve been talking for a while and I’m gonna be a guest for one of her true crime videos.”

Frank waggles his eyebrows. “You’ve been  _ talking?” _

Ray does a dramatic eye roll. “I’m pretty sure she’s married. But stay home while I’m gone, okay? Have some tea or something.”

Frank doesn’t stay home. The minute Ray’s out the door, he showers, bundles himself up, pops in a cherry Luden’s, and sets off for the shop.

Mikey’s behind the counter when he gets there, reading a book and looking bored out of his mind. His face lights up when Frank goes in, and just like he knew it would, his body starts to tingle from head to toe like the most annoying fucking case of pins and needles ever.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be off?”

“Yeah, well.” Frank clears his throat, shaking off the chill in his bones (and the tingling, but that doesn’t help). “Just wanted to check in and make sure the place didn’t burn down.”

Mikey laughs and gestures around the shop. “Haven’t had a customer since I came in. How come you guys aren’t closed on Sunday like everywhere else?”

Frank leans his hip against the counter. Mikey’s got some fancy Hydro Flask sitting next to his book, silver and shiny with his name written on it in Sharpie. “We usually are, but once back-to-school season is over we stay open for the holidays. What’s that?”

Mikey flicks his eyes down to the Hydro Flask, then back up to Frank’s face. “Protein shake for dinner.”

Frank makes a face. “That’s probably the shit I should be drinking.” He coughs to prove his point.

“Yeah, it seems like you’re always sick.” He laughs.

Frank swallows, his throat raw and his mouth tasting like artificial cherry. “Speaking of, I sort of met your brother? I think? And— Can you just tell him I’m sorry for last night?”

Mikey looks at Frank strangely and, yeah, they’re definitely brothers. Frank can see it now. “You met Gerard? What happened?”

Frank’s mulling over how much he actually wants to tell Mikey when the bells on the door jingle. They both look over and of  _ course, _ there’s Gerard. Of-fucking-course.

“Oh, what the hell,” Mikey says quietly and steps out from behind the counter.

Frank’s heart does a somersault. Apparently the universe felt bad about last night too.

Gerard pauses just inside the door, looking like the Michelin Man in his bajillion layers. His scarf is covering half his face again, and his eyes widen above it in the shadow of his train conductor-looking hat when they land on Frank. “Frank,” he says, sounding and looking like he wants to turn right around and run back out of the shop.

“Gee, what are you doing here? Are you okay?” Mikey asks him, putting a hand on his arm. He sounds so  _ serious. _ Which, he gets. Ray is a certified  _ mom _ when it comes to Frank’s health too.

Gerard flicks his eyes from Frank to his brother and reaches up to pull his scarf away from his mouth a little. Is he wearing his  _ fangs _ again? Frank definitely knows the haunted house is only open on Friday and Saturday. “Well, I was taking the trash out and—”

He stops and looks at Frank warily. Mikey looks back at him too and Frank gets the message. He slips into the back room to give them some privacy.

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the shop is so damn small that Frank ends up hearing their entire conversation. Gerard says, “They’re here,” and there’s a pause that has Frank chewing on his lip before Mikey says, sounding older than he is, “Bastards. Fine, they’re not gonna drive us out again. Go home and keep your eyes peeled, okay?”

_ What the hell? _

“Alright. And, um, can you tell Frank I’m sorry?”

Frank’s stomach clenches when he hears his name, and he steps a little further away from the door, even though that’s not gonna make much of a difference.

“What happened? No, you know what? You’re a hundred years old, you can handle it yourself.”

“But—”

_ “No. _ Okay? Frank! You can come out now, sorry.”

Frank goes back out into the shop and tries to arrange his face into some semblance of casualness. Mikey’s got a little crease between his eyebrows and Gerard is staring down at his shoes.

“I think the two of you have something to work out, whatever it is. I didn’t even know you  _ met,” _ Mikey says to Frank, then turns and says to Gerard pointedly, “I mean it, Gee.”

He sits down behind the counter and takes a swift drink from his Hydro Flask. When he picks up his book and starts to read it again, Frank looks at Gerard and Gerard looks at him and gestures to the door.

“Let’s go for a walk?”

Frank follows him outside, popping another cough drop into his mouth so he doesn’t accidentally rip his piercing out with all the nervous lip-chewing he’s doing.

(He stops buzzing when he leaves the shop, again, but he’s getting tired of thinking about it. He’ll double check the drawer again tomorrow since he didn’t get to today.)

They’re coming to the end of the block when Frank finally decides to say something, since it seems like Gerard’s clammed up. “So…wanna get that coffee?”

Gerard lets out a foggy breath. The street lamps cast funny shadows on his face, just like in the haunted house, but Frank still thinks he’s so fucking hot. Like in a David Bowie way. Which is definitely Frank’s type.  _ Fuck. _

“I don’t drink coffee, but sure.”

So they cross the street and go to the 24-hour diner that’s got the best corned beef hash in the whole state. But Frank doesn’t order any, because he’s started coughing again and Gerard doesn’t seem hungry, but he does order a coffee when they sit down at a booth in the back even when Gerard won’t because he’s a slave to caffeine. Even if it’s not coming from Starbucks.

_ (Don’t tell Brian.) _

Gerard doesn’t look at their waitress both times she’s at their table, just stares out the window at the occasional car going by and running his tongue over his teeth almost self-consciously. Frank dumps sugar and cream into his coffee and tries not to stare at Gerard staring out the window. He’s still pale as a ghost even in normal lighting. Frank wonders what he looks like in daylight.

“So, uh.” Frank takes a sip of his coffee and hisses when it burns his tongue. “Sorry for that shit last night. I shouldn’t have showed up at your job like that.”

Gerard finally looks at him. His eyes are wide and they look kind of gray. They’re really pretty. “Don’t apologize. I shouldn’t have reacted that way. You deserved more of an explanation.”

Frank takes another sip; his lip ring clinks against the mug. Throat burning, he says, “It’s cool. I just figured you were straight.”

Gerard smiles and reaches up to take off his train conductor hat. He sets it on the table and fists it in his hands. “That’s definitely not it. Life’s too long to be heterosexual.”

“Don’t you mean too short?”

That same, crooked smile. “No.” A beat passes, and then Gerard says, “No, my brother’s right.” He sighs, and Frank wonders just exactly what Mikey is right about. “I’m not really a…relationship person, you might say.”

Frank wraps both his hands around his hot cup of coffee. He doesn’t think he’s ever had someone sit him down and explain why they rejected him. It’s sort of humiliating, actually.

“That’s alright, man.” Frank clears his throat again. “I totally get it.”

Gerard is quiet for a moment, and when Frank dares to look at him instead of staring at the sugar he spilled on the table, he sees that he’s picking at a thread in his gloves.

“I’m not very good at this,” he eventually says, sounding quiet and sad and  _ so _ tired. “I usually, uh, what do you call it?  _ Ghost _ people. My brother says it’s not healthy, but I don’t remember the last time I was healthy.”

Frank chokes back a laugh, his cheeks burning, and Gerard is almost smiling, his fake fangs bulging against his lips.

“Mikey has a point. But it’s cool, really. I totally get it. I was just pissing in the wind, I guess.”

Gerard looks torn. He pulls on the thread in his glove a little harder. 

Frank reaches out but doesn’t touch Gerard, even though he really wants to. “I’m serious. I put you in an uncomfortable situation instead of asking for your number while you were off the clock like a normal person. You don’t, you know, owe me anything.”

Damn, he’s never this mature. Is this what being in your mid-twenties feels like? Fate should be proud. And as compensation for all the shit he went through, he better wake up with a clear chest tomorrow.

Gerard still looks like he’s trying to make Sophie’s choice, and Frank drinks his cheap coffee and waits for him to speak. Some Top 40 Pop song is playing on the radio, and he taps his foot to the catchy beat beneath the table. He looks anywhere but at Gerard. He smiles at their waitress when she goes by. He tries to act  _ casual. _

“I want to be honest with you, Frank.”

Frank slides his eyes languidly over to Gerard, still tapping his foot, if now a bit more excitedly. Every emotion known to man is pulling at the muscles in Gerard’s face.

“I don’t even know you, but…,” he frowns, runs his tongue over his fangs (does he just never take them out?), pushes his long fingers through his crazy black hair. Frank is on the edge of his fucking seat; the vinyl beneath his ass creaks just to prove his point. “But there’s something about you. When I saw you and your friend at the haunted house Friday night…”

Frank’s going to die right here in this diner if this guy doesn’t  _ spit it out. _

“I’m not sure how to explain it, but when I saw you and your friend at the haunted house the other night I felt—”

“Can I get you two anything else?”

_ Jesus Christ. _

Frank almost splits his face in two smiling up at their waitress. “No. Thanks.”

She beams back at him and slaps the check face down on the table, and then she prances away, her long, blonde ponytail bouncing behind her.

When he looks back at Gerard, he opens his mouth to continue, but Frank beats him to it. “I get what you mean.”

Gerard presses himself back against the booth like someone slapped him across his pale face. The groove between his eyebrows is so deep Frank could bungee jump off it. “You do?”

Frank knocks back the rest of his coffee like it’s something stronger and colder. “Yeah. That’s why I made an asshole of myself trying to ask you out. But like I said, it’s cool. I’m not even sure I was looking for a relationship, I just wanted to grab coffee with the hot guy from the haunted house. And, well, here we are grabbing coffee, so.”

Gerard visibly swallows, his Adam’s apple casting a shadow over the hollow of his throat. “So?”

Frank shrugs, because he has no idea what else to do. “So I think you’re hot  _ and _ cool. And I’d definitely want to grab coffee again, even if I’m the only one drinking it. As friends.”

And he didn’t die saying it, what a fucking feat. He thinks he should be disappointed, but he finds he’s not. He can handle being friends with the guy and not boning him. Because that’s what people in their mid-twenties do.

Gerard looks kind of relieved, Frank thinks, but there’s still a little downturn to his mouth. “I’m not even a  _ friendship _ person, really. I haven’t had a proper friend in…,” he blows out a breath that irritates a lone piece of hair on his forehead, “a long time. But I would like to get to know you better.”

Frank’s heart goes into overdrive. He keeps his mouth shut so he doesn’t ruin it.

“But I have to tell you, Frank, my little brother and I lead…a strange life. That’s all I can really say.”

“I kind of figured, I mean the kid drives a VW  _ bus, _ for fuck’s sake.”

Gerard finally smiles again, and his lips slip over his fangs. Frank hopes he never takes them out. “I can’t promise you that we’ll be staying in town long. Although you seem like the type of person to not ask a lot of questions.”

Frank suddenly remembers their conversation he overheard.  _ They’re not gonna drive us out again. _ He briefly wonders if they’re criminals on the run, some sort of sibling version of Thelma and Louise, and that’s why Frank feels so weird around Mikey. Maybe Mikey’s the one who robs the liquor stores and Gerard is the getaway driver, and that’s why he doesn’t feel that tingly shit around him.

Oof, he’s really gotta keep an eye on the cash register then.

But Gerard’s right; he doesn’t ask a lot of questions. As long as he doesn’t get tied up in any illegal shit, he doesn’t really care. Don’t ask, don’t tell, and all that jazz. (He just doesn’t like people stealing from his shop.)

“Except for the not staying around long, it’s fine by me.”

Gerard cocks his head a little, and Frank really hopes that’s not pity on his face. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you more.”

Frank waves him off. “I don’t want you to. I’ll take what I can get.”

And he’s still not disappointed. Man, he must really like this guy. He can almost hear his mom’s voice in his head saying  _ You get what you get and you don’t get upset. _

Right on, Mom.

“Well?” Frank sticks out his hand over the table. “Friends?”

Gerard hides his smile in his scarf and shakes. “Sure.”

They shake for way longer than friends should, just staring at each other like a couple of nuts, and even though Frank is fine with this arrangement, he has a feeling it’s probably going to end in flames.

They slide out of the booth, Frank feeling all bubbly inside, and while he’s pulling his wallet out of his back pocket Gerard lurches forward suddenly.

“Woah, hey.” Frank reaches out and grabs him by the shoulder. When Gerard looks up at him the shadows beneath his eyes look like double shiners. “You okay?”

Gerard shakes his head a little and blinks hard. His smile is wobbly. “Fine, just a little dizzy.”

Frank frowns. He doesn’t let go of his shoulder. “Do you want to order something to eat? I’ll pay.”

Gerard swallows roughly like he might puke. “I have a pretty strict diet.”

“Oh.” Frank takes his hand away, even though he really doesn’t want to. “Your brother said the same thing.”

“We’re both anemic. He’s just,” he sighs, “healthier than I am.”

“Ah, guess that’s why he was drinking a protein shake. Are you good to go? Or do you wanna chill for a while?”

Gerard shakes his head and pulls his hat back on. “No, we can go. I should probably head home though.”

“So you can eat?”

Gerard sighs yet again. He does that a lot. “Yeah.”

Frank puts some money on the counter under his empty mug and they head back out into the chilly night. They start in the direction of Gerard’s apartment, and Frank really doesn’t want the night to end. He opens his mouth to make some small talk, but a cough tears it’s way out of his throat instead. He pulls his coat closer around him.

“You’re sick,” Gerard says.

Frank finds another cough drop in his pocket and pops it in his mouth. “That’s my middle name. I’ve got the immune system of an eighty-year-old. You’re not too healthy yourself though. Anemia, celiac, diabetes. Are you trying to get a bingo or something?”

Gerard hums but doesn’t say anything. Maybe Frank hit a soft spot. He hates talking about his health too. He doesn’t know what to talk about now though, his brain is completely empty. But Gerard seems content to just walk quietly side by side so Frank keeps his mouth shut and sucks on his cough drop.

They come up to Gerard’s apartment building sooner than Frank would’ve liked, but he doesn’t push it. They’re  _ friends _ now. That’s better than nothing, right?

“I’m really glad you came by the shop,” Frank says honestly, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up at his ears.

Gerard’s eyes are sparkling under the flickering street lamp from under the brim of his hat, and Frank can guess he’s probably smiling under his scarf too, fake fangs and all. “Me too,” he says, kind of muffled.

They start staring at each other again, and Frank can feel a blush warming him from his ears down to his neck, but then he ruins the moment by coughing again, turning his face away quick so he doesn’t spit all over Gerard.

“Sorry, Jesus,” he rasps. “Told you, shitty immune system.”

There goes Gerard’s eyebrows making an abyss in the middle of his forehead again. “I wish I could help.”

And then he reaches out a gloved hand and presses it to Frank’s chest, right where that annoying tickle has been all day. Frank’s breath catches in his throat, and it makes him have to cough again, but he holds it in. Gerard, in this moment, his palm pressed as flat to Frank’s chest as he can get with all the layers between them, looks both world-wise and world-weary.

And it hits Frank then, that Gerard isn’t just a pretty face, a mysterious actor in a haunted house, someone to fuck and forget. He’s a real guy with what seems to be a huge heart. Frank thinks he might be attracted to him in more ways than one, and that’s not something that happens often. Which definitely means this is gonna end in hellfire.

But he’ll worry about that when the time comes.

Gerard finally takes his hand away, shoving it straight back in his pocket. “I would invite you inside, but…”

“Strange lives,” Frank says faintly. “It’s cool. Can I, uh— Could I get your number maybe? Friends gotta stay in touch, right?”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Oh,” Frank says, trying not to sound too surprised. “Sure. They’re overrated anyway. Guess that means we’ll just have to, you know, see each other in person. The old-fashioned way.”

The crinkles by Gerard’s eyes tell him he’s definitely smiling under his scarf. “Guess so. Goodnight, Frank.”

“‘Night.”

Frank watches Gerard hurry inside, a blur of black. He bites his lip hard enough he tastes blood. And then he leaves, heading back in the direction of his own apartment.

His phone buzzes in his pocket halfway there, and he pulls it out to see a text from Ray lighting up the screen.

_ Dude??? Where are you!!!! _

He puts his phone away without answering, still smiling to himself.

Every street lamp Frank passes, he gets the urge to grab onto it and swing around a couple of times. Because he thinks he knows what Gene Kelly was on about. And if that’s not the most fucking ridiculous thing ever, Frank doesn’t know what is.

He’s never felt like this before, which is stupid since he’s known the guy for, what? Two-ish days? Three? Certi-fucking-fiable.

He stops at Rite-Aid on his way home for a pack of smokes, and blindly grabs a couple of candy bars for Ray while he’s at the register. The girl that checks him out looks like she’s been on her feet all day, but when Frank smiles at her and wishes her a good night, she smiles back.

Ray’s sprawled out on the couch watching a game show when he gets in, and he looks grumpy as hell.

“Mom, I’m home,” Frank says as he toes off his shoes at the door. His voice sounds like he swallowed a handful of glass, but he doesn’t even care. He might as well be floating on cloud nine. He chucks the plastic bag of candy at Ray. “Who the fuck pissed in your Cheerios?”

Ray lightens up when he looks inside the bag. “Oh, sweet. Thanks, dude.”

“No problemo. I’m always thinking of you, Toro. How’d the video go?”

Ray sits up. “Pretty good, we had a lot of fun, and I shot one for my channel too. But where were  _ you? _ I thought I told you to stay home.”

Frank drops himself on the couch next to him. “I wanted to apologize to Gerard, so I went to the shop to ask Mikey to pass on the message.”

“Oh, they are brothers then? How’d it go?”

“Gerard showed up to see him, and I guess he didn’t know I worked there because he looked like a deer in the headlights.”

Ray unwraps one of the candy bars, a Heath bar, it looks like Frank grabbed, and breaks off half for him. “Perfect timing, huh?”

Frank takes a bite, his mouth almost immediately watering. “Yeah.” The pit of his stomach turns into a puddle of warm goo. “Then we went to the diner on the corner and talked.”

“Holy shit.” Ray practically chokes on his half of the Heath bar.  _ “And?” _

Frank shrugs, but he’s smiling again. He feels like he could smile for the rest of his life. Which, again, is fucking ridiculous. He blames it all on his impending twenty-fifth birthday. “And we decided to be friends, I guess.”

“Oh,” Ray says with considerably less enthusiasm. “That’s it?”

“Yeah, but—” Frank swallows a mouthful of spit; toffee always makes him drool like a fucking dog. “It’s cool. He’s not looking for a relationship, so I’m fine with being just friends.”

Frank leaves out the part where Gerard tried to tell him he felt _ something. _ Because he thinks he might feel that something too. Or something.

Ray looks at him like he doesn’t believe him, which makes sense, because Frank is still wondering how he believes himself. “I’m happy for you,” he says decisively. “I’m glad you made a new friend.”

He also doesn’t tell Ray that Gerard and Mikey may or may not be fugitives.

“Yeah. Me too.”

  
  
  


The sun is out in all its glory the next day, and it matches Frank’s mood. He loves making new friends, which he doesn’t exactly do all that often. That’s probably just another thing he and Gerard have in common; he’s not really a  _ friendship _ person either, so when he finds someone he clicks with, it’s like a fucking boost of serotonin so huge he could drown in it. Don’t get him wrong, he’s got plenty of acquaintances all over town (Grace, for example), but friends…friends fucking rule. He loves having friends, especially super hot ones that wear vampire fangs off the clock.

Since Gerard doesn’t have a phone, Frank vaguely hopes all day that maybe he’ll stop by again. And then he thinks of texting Mikey to tell Gerard he says hi, but no, that’s crazy; he’s never even texted Mikey before. He’s already embarrassed himself enough.

It’s a pretty dead day, considering it’s Monday and all, so Frank runs across the street to the dollar store to buy a bunch of cheap party hats and hot glues them to his army of jack-o’-lanterns outside, then he decides to finally put up the shitty Halloween decorations he and Brian keep in the back room while shaking his ass to Queen.

Ray shows up with his laptop and some homemade chili in tinfoil-covered bowls around lunchtime, and they sit at the counter eating it while Ray fucks around on Google.

“I’m thinking of doing a video on vampires for Halloween,” he tells Frank, scrolling through the Wiki page for  _ The Lost Boys. _ “Something like  _ Buzzfeed Unsolved. _ I don’t know, all my viewers have been begging me to do one since I did that video on horror movie tropes a while ago and got a bunch of people to do acting cameos. And I guess Gerard inspired me.”

Frank laughs, sniffling when his nose starts to run. Ray always makes him eat chili when he’s got a cold-thing going on, and he always puts an assload of spice in it. “You know I haven’t seen him without his fake fangs in yet?”

Ray makes a funny face, but he’s smiling. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you like him so much?”

Frank rolls his eyes. “It’s a perk, but  _ no.” _

Ray scrolls some more between spoonfuls of his own chili. Then he says, “Oh, did you check the drawer?”

“Mm, yeah. Still all clear.”

Frank felt kind of bad that he was suspicious of Mikey since now he knows he’s Gerard’s brother, but the guy makes him  _ tingle; _ who could blame him? He was just being a good manager.

Plus, Gerard did say they lead  _ strange lives. _

Whatever that means.

“Maybe now you’ll stop feeling weird around him.”

“Hopefully.”

The work phone rings for the first time all day around 3:30, and Ray picks it up because he’s still behind the counter on his laptop, and Frank’s helping the cute cake decorator that just started working at the bakery a few doors down look for a specific Elvis album.

“Hey, Frankie?”

Frank looks over. Ray’s holding the phone out, his hand over the mouthpiece, and he looks…weird.

“Sorry, be right back,” Frank tells his customer.

“Sure thing!” they say.

When he takes the phone from Ray, he tells him, “Can you help them? They’re looking for a copy of  _ Blue Hawaii.” _

Ray heads over to the person with a frown, and Frank puts the phone to his ear.

“Thanks for calling In The Groove Records, this is Frank, what can I do for ya?”

_ “Hey, Frank.” _

He recognizes Mikey’s voice right away, and his stomach does a stupid little flip. “Hey, man, what’s up?”

_ “Um, sorry, I’m probably gonna be a little late.” _

Now Frank knows why Ray looked like that, because Mikey sounds  _ awful, _ almost like he’s been crying or something.

“That’s fine, are you okay?”

There’s a pause that makes Frank start chewing on his lip. It’s probably selfish to think so, but he hopes nothing happened with Gerard. The guy is way sicker than Mikey, after all.

_ “Yeah, Gee’s just having—”  _ He takes in a shaky breath that sounds way out of character.  _ “He’s having a pretty rough day. I’m sorry.” _

Frank swallows. “Oh. That’s—that’s fine. That’s— Do you wanna take the day? Brian won’t mind coming in. He’s done it enough times with me.”

_ “No, it’s okay. I’ll be in as soon as I can.” _

“Is there anything I can do?”

Another pause.

_ “No.” _

And Mikey hangs up.

Frank goes out for a smoke. While he’s out there, kicking at a pumpkin seed that’s stuck to the sidewalk, the person he was helping find  _ Blue Hawaii _ comes out with a bag swinging from their arm, and when they spot Frank they smile.

“Hey, thanks for your help! This place is so cool. Do you have a business card?”

Frank clamps his teeth around the cigarette and searches in his pockets for a card; it’s a good thing Brian got them made, he kept insisting they wouldn’t need any. When he finds one, he hands it over.

“Thanks! Stop in for some free samples sometime.”

They smile at him and Frank tries to smile back, but it’s weak. When they’re gone, back in the bakery, Ray peaks his head out of the shop.

“Hey, is Mikey okay? He didn’t sound good on the phone.”

Frank sucks hard and long on his cigarette and then stubs it out in the overflowing ashtray they keep on the windowsill. When he blows out the smoke he starts hacking like he just smoked a whole pack and Ray slaps him a couple times on the back.

“Gerard’s really sick today.” He spits on the sidewalk and then throws a cough drop back. “He’ll be a little late.”

“Oh, man, I hope he’s okay.” Ray holds open the door for Frank and he goes inside.

“Me too. Is it weird that I’m, like, really worried?”

Frank watches Ray under his hair as he leans his back up against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. “No,” he says thoughtfully. “You’ve got a big heart, Frankie. You care a lot.”

Frank bounces his head in a nod, swishing the cough drop around his mouth with his tongue. He picks up a pile of records someone left on the floor and starts putting them away just for something to do with his hands.

He hopes his big stupid heart doesn’t ruin this for him.

  
  
  


Ray leaves a little after four with their crusty chili bowls and tells Frank to give him a ring when he’s ready to go.

Mikey shows up at 4:30, and he looks like complete shit. He definitely looks like he was crying on his way over. Or at least trying really hard not to.

Frank watches him from behind the counter as he hurries into the back room, and then he comes back out without his sunglasses and sweatshirt. He looks manic, but when he spots Frank, standing there trying not to stare at him and picking idly at the peeling stickers on the countertop, he sighs loudly and says,  _ “Fuck.” _

Frank looks up and swallows. His eyes are swollen, his lips are bitten raw, and his hair is a fucking mess. “Hey,” he says weakly. “How’s, uh— How’s Gerard?”

Mikey pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut. “I wish I smoked.” He drops his hand. “And  _ God _ I miss alcohol. I don’t remember the last time I had a fucking drink.”

Frank starts picking a little more frantically at the countertop. Now that Mikey’s here, he feels like a live wire, and it’s not mixing well with the nervous roiling in his stomach.

He looks at Frank head-on finally. “Gerard told me about last night, and I’m really fucking glad. I’m so fucking glad he finally has a fucking  _ friend.” _

“Um,” Frank says. He doesn’t really sound glad.

“But he’s so fucking  _ stupid.”  _ Mikey smacks the side of the counter and Frank swears he hears something crack. Jesus, how strong is this kid?

“Um,” Frank says again.

_ “Fuck.” _ Mikey lets out an explosive sigh. “I’m sorry. Sorry. It’s just hard sometimes. Especially when he has bad days like this.”

Something unclenches in Frank’s stomach, and he finally stops picking at the stickers. “That’s okay. I get it.”

Mikey lets out a rueful kind of laugh, and runs his hand through his hair. “You don’t, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Do you…want to talk about it? How bad is he? Today?”

Mikey thinks about it. “He’s getting worse, and there’s nothing he’ll let me do about it.”

Frank’s stomach starts doing the Samba. Gerard’s getting  _ worse? _ Can that happen with the shit he’s got? Or is he sicker than Frank knows? “Do you want me to, like, check on him? I don’t mind running over there.”

Mikey clenches his jaw. “No.”

“…Alright. Do you want to talk more? I’ve got a couple of ears to lend, man.”

“No.”

_ Damn, okay. _

Frank coughs then, of course, and it breaks the tension a little. Just a little.

Mikey sighs and reaches out a hand like Gerard did last night. He touches the tips of his fingers to Frank’s chest just shy of his crucifix, almost like he knows it’s there and is actively avoiding it, and beneath the static in his veins he can feel the sick just  _ leaving. _ It’s gone. Just like that, there’s no more tickle in his chest or throat.

“What the fuck?” he asks when Mikey pulls his hand away.

He looks preoccupied, like he doesn’t even realize what just happened, but then he says, “Don’t ask.”

So Frank doesn’t.

  
  
  


_ walking home. need to clear my head. _

_ Are you sure??? I don’t want you to get sicker!!! _

_ i’m sure. _

_ <3 _

Frank switches his phone off and shoves it deep in the pocket of his sweatshirt. It’s just—

It’s so fucking typical that this guy that he  _ just _ became friends with, who he maybe sorta kinda has feelings for, is fucking— He’s fucking—

God. Frank doesn’t even want to think about it, but Mikey made it sound like Gerard is  _ dying. _

He has so many Goddamn questions he’s sure his head is about to start spinning on his neck.

What’s really wrong with him? What are they hiding? Why does Frank feel electrified in a bad way whenever he’s around Mikey?  _ Did Mikey fucking heal him by touching him? _

He regrets the whole  _ don’t ask, don’t tell _ shit.

This is why Frank is so fucking picky with his friends and his partners and whatever-the-fuck. Ray never put him through this sort of bullshit. He never made Frank’s big stupid heart, that cares way too much about everything, feel like a California raisin. The only potentially harmful secret Ray ever kept from him was that he prefers cats over dogs.

Before Frank knows it, he’s coming up on Gerard and Mikey’s apartment building, and he stands outside staring up at it while the sky gets all golden in its pre-sunset way.

And then he leaves. Because if there’s nothing Mikey can do to help his brother, there’s definitely nothing Frank can do either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when i started writing this fic i never expected it to be as long as it was, therefore i never planned on making it chaptered, so if the chapters/formatting/whatever feels kind of weird then that’s why!!! sorry about that i hope it all flows okay!
> 
> don’t forget to either subscribe to this fic or to my ao3 as a whole to get emails whenever i update :-)
> 
> [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydarIing)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY KIDS! welcome back <3 now like i said before, this was never supposed to be chaptered therefore the formatting is weird since i had to randomly choose places to split it up so this chapter is Long 👀 hope that’s okay 😁
> 
> chapter dedicated to [ren <3](https://mobile.twitter.com/darlingrry)
> 
> enjoy friends!!!

Frank feels like he just fell asleep when there’s a distant knock at the front door, but when he reaches over and checks his phone, the screen tells him it’s 2:30 in the morning. He’s been asleep for almost four hours already.

There’s another knock, and Frank gets out of bed. He pads through the apartment barefoot and in his underwear, eyes practically glued shut. Unsteadily he reaches for the door, and when he opens it he almost falls asleep standing up.

But he doesn’t, because leaning against the wall across the hall, is Gerard.

Frank is suddenly wide awake, and it hits him then, how worried sick he was all night, and how Ray cuddled him on the couch in between editing before he ended up crawling into bed earlier than he has in a long-ass time.

“What the fuck?” he says stupidly, mouth still lazy with sleep and his tongue like cotton. “Gerard?”

He looks awful, worse than Mikey did by a longshot; he looks like he ditched his own wake. He’s not wearing his scarf or hat or gloves, and even his coat isn’t buttoned up. “Please invite me in,” he says tiredly.

Frank steps aside so fast he almost trips over his own feet. “Yeah, shit, come in.” When Gerard is inside he shuts and locks the door quickly behind him. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

Gerard shakes his head a little and tips suddenly like he’s gonna fall over. Frank is there in an instant with his hands on him. “I was worried about you.”

“What—  _ Me? _ Wh— You look like you’re freezing, I’m gonna make some coffee.”

He makes to guide Gerard over to the couch, but Gerard makes a noise of protest. “Can we go to your bedroom?”

Frank’s stomach jumps. Right. He doesn’t like coffee. “Uh, yeah. Sure, yeah, come on.”

He walks Gerard slowly to his room, and when they’re about to go in, Ray calls from his room right next to Frank’s, “Frankie? Y’okay?”

“Yeah,” Frank calls back through the crack in Ray’s door. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mmmkay.”

In his room he sits Gerard down on his bed and shuts the door. When he turns on the lamp on his bedside table, Gerard full-body winces. “How did you even know where I live?”

Gerard doesn’t look up at him. He looks like he’s on another planet. “I texted your friend Brian from Mikey’s phone and asked.”

Frank doesn’t want to know what Brian was doing up at two in the morning. He grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, “should I go?”

“No, fuck, just—”

Frank’s never taken care of anyone before, but he knows the ropes. He helps Gerard out of his coat and shoes and finds he’s already in his pajamas: an old Elton John T-shirt that’s three sizes too big for him which looks like it came straight from 1981, and a fluffy pair of pants with the  _ Star Wars _ logo written on them that Frank is pretty sure he’s seen at Target. He gets a sweatshirt from his dresser and helps Gerard into it, then changes his socks for him too, slipping on a pair that’s softer and cleaner and definitely warmer.

“I hope your brother knows where you are, because you’re staying here now.”

Gerard makes a noise that sounds like it could be a laugh, and pulls his legs up and lays back. Eyes closed, he says, “He fell asleep when he got home from work. I must’ve…,” he sighs, “worn him out.”

Frank’s heart twists but he says, “You snuck  _ out? _ You’re like, seriously sick, man.”

He turns the lamp off and crawls onto the other side of the bed. He gets the blankets over them and props himself up on his elbow, squinting at Gerard’s white face in the dark. He looks so peaceful, in a dead sort of way. Frank can’t even imagine how he’s feeling right now. Mikey  _ cried _ over him, and Mikey doesn’t seem like the crying type.

Frank doesn’t even know what’s really wrong with Gerard.

“Like I said…I was worried.” Gerard burrows down under the blanket a little until it’s up to his chin. He still doesn’t open his eyes. “I knew you were worried about me.”

That logic is fucking insane, but— “You did?”

Gerard hums but doesn’t elaborate. Man, the Way brothers are fucking weird. But Frank thinks he gets it. Which is even weirder. And also  _ Oh my God, Gerard is in my bed??? _

“I’m sorry I worried you, Frank.”

“Would you stop apologizing? I know what it’s like to be sick.”

“You don’t know what this is like,” Gerard whispers.

Frank bites his lip. Just as quiet, he says, “Could you tell me?”

Mikey couldn't, but maybe Gerard will. Frank vaguely wonders if that’s wrong of him to think.

But Gerard frowns. He’s wearing his fangs again. “No.”

Well it was definitely worth a shot.

And then he does something really stupid. He reaches out and brushes hair off Gerard’s forehead. Gerard’s eyes flutter open, and he turns his head on the pillow. He looks at Frank’s crucifix hanging from his neck and the frown doesn’t lighten up.

“I think I was supposed to meet you,” he says to Frank’s chest, and the base of Frank’s skull prickles. But not in the way like when he’s around Mikey.

“Me too.”

And it’s true. He almost feels it in his bones. He’s only known Gerard for a couple of days, been friends with him even less than that, but he feels pulled to him like a magnet; it’s kind of unexplainable, and he didn’t really realize it until now. It’s almost like how he couldn’t take his eyes off Mikey when he first met him, but it’s also in a different way. Everything feels  _ different _ with Gerard.

They stare at each other for a few seconds longer (Frank definitely hasn’t breathed in at least fifteen minutes) and then Gerard slowly drags himself over until his head is on Frank’s pillow by his elbow.

Frank stares down at him because he’s stupid and doesn’t remember the last time he had a cute boy in his bed (let alone one he was supposed to be  _ just friends _ with). And then he sinks down and wraps his arms around Gerard, and Gerard puts his head on his bare chest.

“Could you take that off?”

“What?”

“Your necklace.”

“My—” Frank reaches up and touches the cross. “I never take it off.”

A pause.

“Okay.”

Frank doesn’t know why it bothers him, but he puts the cross to the back of its chain anyway so it hangs between his shoulder blades. He swallows. This moment feels so strange and fragile and he doesn’t want to ruin it.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Well—” Frank reaches behind him for the unopened bottle of water Ray must have left for him on his nightstand. “At least drink something?”

Gerard opens his eyes and looks at the water, then he sits up a little and takes it from him. He turns his head away from Frank when he takes a sip, but Frank is pretty sure he spits it back in. He takes the bottle from him and sets it back on the nightstand without a word.

Gerard settles back down against Frank’s chest. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to keep thanking me either.” Frank thinks for a second, weighs the words on his tongue. “But you can…tell me what’s wrong. With you, I mean. I kind of really wanna know.”

Gerard sighs so deep it sounds like it came from his toes. Frank thinks he’s going to say no again, but then he says, “Exhaustion. Migraines. Nausea. Dizziness. All chronic, all getting worse all the time.”

_ Damn.  _ “And it’s not just your anemia? Or diabetes?”

Yet another weighted pause. Then, “No.”

Frank wonders what sort of lives Gerard and Mikey lead that would require Gerard’s  _ health _ to be kept under lock and key. It’s so fucking strange.

He knows he said he wouldn’t ask questions, but there’s one that’s been tickling the back of his brain all night. “Are you dying?”

Gerard is quiet for so long Frank thinks he might have fallen asleep. “I wish I could be honest with you.”

“But you can’t,” Frank says, his heart contracting in his chest. The deflection couldn’t mean anything other than  _ yes. _ Frank heard it loud and clear, and it kind of makes him want to fucking cry.

“I’m sorry.”

Frank doesn’t tell him it’s okay. He’s really not sure it is. But he wants it to be.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Frank,” Gerard says. “It’s the opposite. I think I trust you too much. Is that weird?”

“No,” Frank says. He thinks he gets it.

He’s starting to feel like Mikey and Gerard leading  _ strange lives _ is a huge understatement.

They’re quiet.

“Well, I’m going to make you a killer breakfast in the morning. Okay?”

Gerard shifts his face so his cheek is pressed right over Frank’s heart; he’s so  _ cold. _ “Okay.”

  
  
  


Gerard is gone by the time Frank wakes up, and he’s not even surprised.

Ray is too, but there’s a text on his phone telling him he had to help one of his brothers move a couch into his new place or something. That’s fine. He didn’t even tell him to stay in this time, because Frank’s not sick anymore. He hasn’t coughed since Mikey touched him.

_ What the fuck did I get myself into? _

Frank is content with staying in bed all day, face pressed into the spot where Gerard was just a couple hours ago, but then he sees a pair of socks on his floor he doesn’t recognize and gets up. They’re Gerard’s socks. Of course they are. They’re soft and worn and have little paw prints on them that Frank didn’t notice last night. He must still be wearing Frank’s sweater too; his ears go warm at the thought.

Gerard and Mikey might have a secret that’s bigger than Frank anticipated looming over them, but Frank can still be a good friend. He did say he wasn’t going to ask questions, anyway. He should probably stick with that.

Frank gets dressed and goes down to the laundry room in the basement to wash the socks. He puts them in by themselves despite the hamper in his room being close to overflowing. After dumping in some of the shitty detergent that’s always down here, he sits on one of the freezing wooden benches and burrows down into his coat like a turtle to wait.

When he’s taking the socks out of the washer, the door to the stairwell opens, and in walks some girl Frank maybe recognizes from around the building. She’s in flannel pants and a cardigan, and she doesn’t have a lot of laundry either. Just a shirt or something balled up in her hands and a bottle of bleach.

The shirt or something looks like it’s covered in blood.

“Hey, handsome,” she says, smiling, when she catches Frank staring at her.

Frank looks at her face. She’s smiling like a cat that just caught the canary, and there’s a glint in her eyes he’s not sure he trusts. “Morning,” he says. He looks at the shirt again.

“Oh, this?” The girl shakes it out, and it’s definitely covered in blood. That or she got into a fight with a ketchup bottle. “Just got my period.”

She throws the shirt into one of the machines and dumps in a fuckton of bleach. There’s a Band-Aid on her neck.

Frank leaves the laundry room with the socks still wet. Is everyone around here suddenly weird as fuck? What the  _ fuck? _ He balls the socks up and stuffs them in his pocket and speed walks to the shop.

Brian’s doing some spring cleaning or some shit when Frank gets there, albums everywhere and tapes all over the floor. “Hey! The fuck are you doing here?”

Frank shrugs. He’s not sure why, but he suddenly has the overwhelming urge to check on Gerard. His chest is tight with anxiety, and has been since he left the apartment.

Brian squints at him and starts stepping carefully over his mess. Frank can’t meet his eyes. “What’s the matter with you? Did something happen?”

Frank squeezes Gerard’s damp socks in his pocket. He has no idea what to say, about anything. “I’ll just come back when Mikey’s in.”

“I gave the kid the day off,” Brian tells him. “I thought it was only fair.”

Frank sighs and bites the bullet. “Can I have his number?”

Brian shrugs and gestures to the counter. “Don’t gotta ask me.”

Frank goes over to the counter and finds his legal pad. Mikey’s number is written on the top page. Without a second thought, he calls it.

It rings, and rings, and rings.

He calls back, and it rings some more.

“Fuck.”

“Is everything okay?” Brian’s standing there watching him with a concerned frown, a stack of albums in his arms.

“Do you know their address?”

He’s looking at him like he’s got two heads. “Frank, are you having some sort of manic episode?”

Frank rolls his eyes so hard he sees the inside of his skull.  _ “No. _ I just— I need to check on his brother.” Brian stares at him across the shop. Frank smacks his hand on the countertop, kind of like how Mikey did yesterday.  _ “Bri. _ I’m fucking fine, okay? I’m just worried.”

_ And confused as shit and maybe even a little scared? _

Brian gives Frank the address to their apartment building, which Frank  _ knows, _ but then he gives him their apartment  _ number, _ and Frank is out of the shop before he can even thank him.

He’s shaking by the time he gets to Mikey and Gerard’s floor, and he pretends it’s from the cold. Their apartment is at the end of the hall, by the emergency stairs, and Frank has to make sure he’s not gonna puke before he knocks on the door.

But just like the phone, there’s no answer.

He needs some answers.  _ Fuck _ not asking questions.

“Mikey?” he calls. “Gerard?”

He pounds on the door with the flat of his palm and it clicks open.  _ Praise these shitty apartment complexes. _ Frank knows he shouldn’t, but he goes in.

The apartment is darker than dark, like they’ve got blackout curtains on the windows. It’s kind of disorienting, but then Frank spots a sliver of light in what he thinks is a hallway, though he’s not too sure. He walks towards the light, his hands outstretched so he doesn’t bump into anything. He should call out so it doesn’t seem like he’s breaking and entering, but for some reason he can’t.

He reaches the sliver of light and finds a door slightly ajar. Frank squints into the room.

There’s only a single lamp on, illuminating the bed. And on the bed—

Frank’s breath catches in his throat.

Sitting on the edge of the bed is a girl in her bra, head tilted back to give room for Mikey, who’s kneeling behind her and…giving her a hickey? But then Mikey lifts his face from the girl’s neck, and blood starts to pool in her collarbone from two very obvious puncture wounds.

Frank makes a noise that doesn’t sound human and stumbles back from the door. He hits the wall and he gasps.

“What was that?” says the girl, breathless.

The door is wrenched open suddenly, flooding the hall in weak light, and Mikey is standing there as shirtless as the girl. Blood stains his mouth wet and red, dripping from a pair of razor-sharp fangs and down his chin.

Frank screams and runs.

Behind him, Mikey says in an angry bellow, “I thought you locked the door!”

Frank books it down the hallway and heads for the emergency stairwell, since it’ll probably be quicker than the elevator.

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” he says to himself as he runs down the stairs, his heart beating so hard in his chest he’s surprised he’s not going into cardiac arrest.

Because  _ what the fuck? _

“Frank!” Mikey shouts from the top of the stairs, his voice loud and echoing against the cement walls.

Frank looks up, and of course that’s when his foot misses a step.

  
  
  


“Frankie. Hey, Frankie.”

Frank opens his eyes. Two faces stare down at him, one significantly paler than the other.

“Huh?” he says, because it’s all he can manage to get out. He feels the same as when he’d fall asleep after getting home from school and now it’s dinnertime and he has no idea what year it is.  _ What the fuck happened? _

Except Gerard is sitting next to him, his face a white moon of panic, and everything comes back to him at once.

_ Mikey, the naked girl, the blood— _

“I’m gonna— Oh, fuck.”

“Are you gonna be sick?” Ray asks, standing behind Gerard with his hands fisted in the front of his shirt.

Gerard helps him sit up, his hands careful, his eyes wide. Frank puts his head between his knees and just  _ breathes. _

“What the fuck,” he says to his crotch.

A cool hand presses itself to his back. “How’s your head?”

His head? Oh, right. He took a swan dive down the stairwell. And now he’s back in Mikey and Gerard’s apartment, which is exactly where he  _ didn’t _ want to be. His head’s fine, though. He doesn’t hurt at all.

Which is just another heaping of weird on this ever-growing mountain of bullshit.

“Frank,” Gerard coaxes gently. He sounds tired, which Frank has learned isn’t unusual for him, but it reminds him just why he came here in the first place. He picks his head up slowly, and Gerard reaches out to touch his forehead lightly, right above his left eyebrow. A chill goes through him.

“What the fuck is going on?” he whispers, flicking his eyes between Gerard and Ray. Gerard frowns and looks behind him at Ray. Frank realizes this is the first time they’re meeting properly. What fucking circumstances.

“Gerard and Mikey are sort of vampires,” Ray offers, with a shrug that’s way too casual for this whole fucking thing.

“Okay,” Frank says, putting his head back between his knees, “I think I am gonna puke.”

They’re both quiet for way longer than Frank would have liked, so he picks his head up yet again and flits his eyes between the two. Ray is chewing on his lip nervously, and Gerard is still frowning, but neither of them look like they’re joking.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Frank says, because it’s the only thing that makes sense.

Gerard shakes his head. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to tell you.”

But of course Frank walked in on Mikey sucking some girl’s blood. Which—

“Where is she?”

“What?”

“That  _ girl. _ Where is she? Is she dead?”

Gerard looks alarmed.  _ “No. _ God, no, Frank, we don’t kill anyone.”

Frank studies his face. Either he’s got one hell of a poker face or— “You’re serious. You’re actually a fucking vampire.”

Gerard almost looks bashful, like he just told Frank he’s secretly a piano prodigy or something. He licks his fangs, like that would prove anything to Frank; he’s had them out this whole time!

Frank looks up at Ray. “You’re taking this way better than I expected.”

Ray smiles, and it’s so fucking out of the ordinary for this whole thing. Frank isn’t entirely sure he isn’t dreaming, that he didn’t crack his head open like an egg and he’s in a medically-induced coma somewhere. “Guess that’s what happens when you study the occult for a living. Are you telling me you’re freaked out? You, out of  _ everyone?” _

Frank thinks about it, and realizes he’s not as wigged out as he thought. Yeah, seeing Mikey sucking some girl’s  _ blood _ was a shock, but he’s actually not so…surprised? He might even be relieved, under the shock, if you could call it that. Because somehow, as fucked up as it sounds, it makes  _ sense. _

When he finally schedules his physical, he’s definitely gonna ask for a psych eval too. Jesus Christ on a cracker.

Frank points a shaky finger at Gerard. “You’re going to answer all my questions now.”

And he smiles, small and sweet. He touches Frank’s hand, featherlight, like he doesn’t want to scare him. “Of course.”

Frank swallows and doesn’t look down at where they’re touching. He asks Ray, “Where’s Mikey?” He feels like he should apologize or something.

Ray looks behind him at the closed bedroom door. “Uh, he’s just out in the living room. I think he was giving Brian a ring to let him know you won’t be coming in later.”

“Can you get him?”

“No,” Gerard says immediately. “No, I think we need a few minutes alone, Ray. If you don’t mind?”

“Oh!” Ray looks between them. “Yeah, sure, I’ll just…” And he leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

Alone with Gerard again.

Alone with Gerard who’s a  _ vampire. _ What the hell is his life coming to?

“I just wanted to explain things to you before Mikey got all business,” he tells Frank, not exactly meeting his eye. “He’s pretty serious about the whole thing. Understandably so, but.”

“Yeah,” Frank says stupidly. He still feels the need to pinch himself, and hard.

Gerard cocks his head a little to the side, and his hair escapes from behind his ear. Frank realizes suddenly that he’s still not dressed in his millions of layers, instead he’s just in his  _ Star Wars _ pants and Frank’s sweatshirt like he was this morning. A vampire is wearing Frank’s sweatshirt. No,  _ Gerard _ is wearing Frank’s sweatshirt.

Gerard, who is a vampire, is currently wearing Frank’s sweatshirt and reaching out a pale hand to touch his forehead again.

“Are you sure you’re okay? I hate questioning Mikey’s skill, but he said you took a pretty bad fall.”

“Um, yeah.”  _ Mikey’s skill. _ “Did he heal me?”

Gerard’s fingers trace down his temple; he still won’t meet Frank’s eye. “He did. He’s very good at it, so you don’t have to worry.”

“Can you heal me?”

His eyes finally flick up to Frank’s. His fingers still on his cheekbone. “I haven’t been able to heal anyone in a long time. Not since I started getting worse.”

Finally Frank is getting the answers he wanted, but now he’s not so sure he actually does want them.

He keeps asking anyway.

“How long have you been sick?”

Gerard watches his own fingers drag down Frank’s cheek, his skin tugging in their wake, and Frank watches his eyes. He looks so tired. “Eighty-seven years.”

All of Frank’s breath leaves him like he just took a dodgeball to the gut.  _ 87 years. _ “How, uh…,” he swallows roughly; his mouth is dry as  _ shit, _ “How old are you.”

“Twenty-eight.” Gerard smiles his crooked little smile, but the shadows under his eyes give him away. They always give him away. He blows a breath out through his nose. “I’m one hundred and sixty-five years old.”

Gerard’s fingers reach his mouth and he touches Frank’s lip ring absently. He hisses when the metal hits his skin, and he pulls his hand away like he’s been burnt.

“Silver?” he says, looking between Frank’s lip and nose rings.

Frank’s head is spinning, but he manages to say, “Yeah, sterling silver. I’ve got sensitive skin. Are you okay? Did it— What happened?”

He reaches out and takes Gerard’s hand in his. His cold, pale,  _ dead _ hand.

_ Oh my God, he’s dead, isn’t he? _

The tip of his pointer finger is red and blistered, and it surprises Frank a little to see. He surprises himself even more when he brings Gerard’s finger to his mouth, the side without any piercings, and presses a kiss to it. He feels like he’s moving on autopilot. Gerard’s eyes, which look almost green against the sweatshirt he’s wearing, go wide.

“I don’t have any fancy healing powers,” Frank says, still holding Gerard’s hand in both of his own, “but if my mom taught me anything, it’s that a good old-fashioned kiss can fix just about anything.”

_ See, Toro? I’m not bad at flirting. _

Well, he is, but maybe it’s just easier when the person he’s flirting  _ with _ happens to be something out of gothic folklore. And also he still doesn’t totally believe he’s conscious right now.

Why is he even flirting? From  _ shock? _ That’s one coping mechanism he never expected to have. Plus, something shifted last night when Gerard showed up on his doorstep. Something that doesn’t really feel like  _ friendship. _ And maybe getting this weird-as-fuck secret out of the way was the shove they needed.

“Well that’s one remedy I haven’t tried yet,” Gerard says so quietly Frank almost thinks he imagined it.

Frank finally clams up, ears and cheeks and neck and basically everything above his shoulders going hot, and he lowers Gerard’s hand to the bed. He looks away. “So, uh. You’re old as shit, huh?”

Gerard lets out a glorious startled laugh, one that shows off all his strange teeth and crinkles his eyes at the corners. It lightens the mood in the room considerably, like they’re just hanging out and Gerard isn’t revealing the craziest fucking family secret in the history of family secrets.  _ Strange lives  _ was definitely an understatement.

And then Gerard grunts and drops his head into his hands.

“Hey, woah, you okay? What happened?”

“Sorry,” he says tightly, and when he picks his head back up he’s squinting in obvious pain. “Migraine. It was getting better but I’m not used to being up at this hour.”

“Oh, shit, right, uh.” Frank clambers from the bed, probably too fast since his legs almost give out, and flicks the light off. “Nocturnal, yeah.”

Which makes a whole heaping pile of sense, now that he thinks about it. He probably should have figured this out way sooner.

Gerard is already sinking down and pulling the blankets up around him when Frank crawls back in. Last night Gerard was in his bed, and now Frank is in Gerard’s. This has been the weirdest fucking week of his life.

“Better?”

“Mhm. Thank you.”

“Don’t gotta thank me. It’s your room.”

Frank swears he sees a smile, even though he can barely see his own hand; blackout curtains are seriously something.

The minute he’s on his back and his head is on one of the pillows, Gerard scoots closer and glues his cheek to Frank’s chest like he did last night. Frank doesn’t mind. It almost feels familiar, having Gerard in his arms, even though this is only the second time.

“So you can’t go out in sunlight, right?”

Gerard sighs. “Some can. Mikey’s able to be out towards the end of the day. A few hours before sunset. I was the same.”

“But not anymore?”

“Not for about thirty years, no. I stay in from sunup to sundown and sleep pretty much the whole while.” A pause. “I’ve been sleeping some during the night too. Which I’ve never done before.”

There’s a lump in Frank’s throat. “Can I, uh, get you anything? Like, do you need some blood?”

Gerard presses his face a little harder into Frank’s chest, and Frank takes that as an invitation to hold him a little closer. “No. I wouldn’t be able to keep it down anyway.” Another pause. Frank wonders how many people he’s had to explain this to. “That’s why I’m sick.”

“What?”

“The blood. I only feed from animals.”

Frank takes a second to process this. “And that’s…bad?” He backtracks. “I know you said you don’t kill anyone but—” He blows out a hard breath through his nose. He has no idea what he’s saying.

“We have to feed on human blood to survive,” Gerard says patiently. “It doesn’t have to be fresh, but it has to be human. I’ve never…”

He trails off, but Frank understands. Finally he understands something. “You’ve never drank human blood?  _ Never?” _

Gerard shakes his head a little against Frank’s chest. He hopes his cross doesn’t bother him through his shirt. Can that happen? “I just can’t. I can’t, I don’t have it in me. I’ve been— _ like this _ for more than a century and I still don’t know why I can’t do it.”

Frank swallows and rubs his hand up and down Gerard’s cool arm. “That’s okay. I think. Nothing wrong with being a vegan.”

Gerard lets out a little puff of air that might be a laugh. “It is if it’s killing you.”

Frank’s heart trips in his chest. So he is dying. Now he knows why Mikey was so pissed when he came into the shop yesterday.  _ All he has to do is drink a little bit of blood and he’d be fine! _ If all Frank had to do to have an adequate immune system, to  _ live forever, _ was suck someone’s blood, he’d do it in a second.

_ “Sangue Debolezza.” _

“What?” Frank says, a little sharper than he meant to.

“That’s what I have. It’s the only thing that can kill us.”

“Wh—”

“Other than a stake through the heart, and all that shit.”

That’s the first time Frank heard Gerard swear, and it sort of upset him way more than it should’ve. He doesn’t want to say anything now, just wants to lay here in this strange, dark apartment, with this strange, dark person pressing their face to his chest to listen to his heartbeat because he doesn’t have one of his own and pretend everything is  _ normal. _

“I’m sorry,” Gerard whispers eventually.

Frank shushes him. He wants to stew. He feels like he earned it.

“I’m serious, Frank. I didn’t want to tell you.”

That anger bubbles up in Frank’s chest. He sits up and takes Gerard with him. “So, what? We were just gonna become friends and then you,” he sputters,  _ “die?” _

Gerard looks like he wants to cry. He looks so tired and so sick and Frank feels awful that he feels this way. For a split second, he almost wishes he didn’t meet him.

It’s fleeting though.  _ Fuck. _

Gerard looks down, his hair falling around his face. Frank has to trap his hands between his legs so he doesn’t do something stupid like tuck it behind his ears. “This is why I don’t make friends anymore,” he says quietly. “It’s gotten too hard.”

Frank swallows. “Why me then?”

“You’re different.”

His heart does a flip, and the anger leaves him in one fell swoop. God, he’s an asshole. Let’s be honest, he probably wouldn’t be able to drink someone’s blood if he had to either.

Gerard looks back up. His eyes are practically shining. Maybe they are. “The way I feel around you, and the way I feel  _ for _ you, is so… I’ve never felt it before. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Frank watches his face and wonders how he could ever be mad at him, and especially for something so crazy and out of his control. And then he says  _ fuck it _ and kisses Gerard. It’s short because Frank’s lip ring burns Gerard’s mouth, and Gerard’s fangs are sharp as hell, but fucking shit, Frank swears he sees fireworks. And not in the Hallmark way. In the, like, supernatural way. Or something.  _ Wow. _

Gerard wrenches himself away, and Frank tries not to take too much offense to that. It  _ was _ a dumb-as-hell move. “Are you—” Frank starts, because Gerard is touching his mouth.

“Did I cut you?” he rushes out.

“I’m fine,” Frank laughs. “Are you?”

Gerard takes his hand away and licks his lips. Frank tries not to watch the movement but he fails spectacularly. “You kissed me.”

Frank blinks. “Uh. Yeah.”

That was not the smartest fucking thing to do. Gerard is going through a lot and Frank just woke up from having the biggest fucking scare of his  _ life _ and this isn’t exactly a lighthearted situation but he just couldn’t help himself. He really couldn’t. He figures it was sort of inevitable.

Because just being friends was never in the cards for him. He’s not built like that.

Frank sighs heavily.  _ “Fuck, _ I’m sorry. Was that— Did I ruin it? I don’t wanna seem weird and pushy because I was already weird and pushy when I asked you out but—”

Gerard is kissing  _ him _ now. On the mouth again. Clear of any piercings so it’s kind of awkward, but on the mouth all the same.

When they pull away, Gerard is smiling. His fangs practically sparkle despite the bedroom being pitch black. “You didn’t ruin anything. I don’t remember the last time I kissed anyone.”

Frank wants to laugh, because that’s exactly something he’d say, but he realizes it’s probably true for Gerard.  _ Weird as hell. _

Frank feels himself go warm. He’s glad Gerard can’t see him. Or maybe he can. Do vampires have night vision? “So I didn’t fuck everything up?”

“I’m pretty sure me being a terminally-ill vampire already did that.”

Well that was a mood killer. Gerard seems to be really good at that.

That feeling of wishing he never met Gerard comes back, and this time it’s not so fleeting. This shit isn’t  _ fair. _ Plain and fucking simple. He hasn’t had a decent relationship with anyone in fuck-knows and now that there’s the possibility of one, the guy is dying from some vampire-specific supernatural  _ disease? _

“How long do you have?” He almost wants to vomit up the breakfast he didn’t eat just thinking about it. But he forces himself to swallow down anymore anger. It’s not worth it. He hates being angry.

Gerard runs his fingertips along the back of Frank’s hand, tracing his tattoos. A shiver runs up his arm and down his spine. “Mikey and I don’t think I’ll make it through the decade.”

Ten years. That seems almost like a lifetime to Frank, but he knows to Gerard it’s probably nothing.

“And there’s nothing…”

“No. We’ve been to witch doctors and herbalists and even human vampire specialists all over the country, but nothing worked. Nothing  _ will _ work except human blood, and you know how I feel. At this point I’m so far gone it’d probably do more harm than good anyway, and that’s the last thing I need.”

“When was the last time you tried something?” Frank vaguely feels like he’s having an out-of-body experience, like he’s watching this whole thing from the sidelines. Maybe he needs to go throw himself down some stairs again.

Gerard frowns. “Sometime in the eighties, I think.”

“Well science and shit is evolving every day, right? I’m sure if you—”

“Frank,” Gerard interrupts calmly, tapping the back of his hand. “I’ve had this conversation with my brother a million times. I’ve made peace with my fate. And if we’re going to…do whatever we’re doing, so should you.”

Frank hangs his head, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I think that’s easier said than done.”

“I know. This is why I don’t have friends anymore,” he says again, quietly. “Or relationships. Because we’ve both watched so many important people come and go in our lives, and no matter how many times it happens, it never gets any easier. And now the roles are reversed—for me, at least—and I’d hate to have someone go through what we do.”

They stare at each other, the darkness of Gerard’s bedroom a tangible thing that feels like it’s closing in around Frank the longer he sits here in this bed with this person that’s so near yet so unattainable.

“You don’t have to stay,” Gerard says when Frank is silent. “I understand.”

But he’s  _ not _ unattainable. That’s the thing. Gerard is right here, seeming to want some sort of relationship with Frank for reasons he can’t explain, even though it’s weird and scary, and Frank  _ feels the same fucking way. _

What’s that shit everyone says? It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?

So the only reason Frank would choose to leave right here, right now is if he’s a coward. And if there’s one thing he’s not, it’s that.

“Can you put your fangs away?” he asks, mouth moving before his brain can catch up. He’s turning autopilot the fuck off.

Gerard frowns. “It takes a lot of energy to sheathe them, so when October comes around I just choose to leave them out. Why?”

Frank already had his lip ring out and is working on his nose ring. He shrugs. “If you can’t, that’s fine. I’ll be careful.”

Now he’s smiling, kind of shyly. “What—”

After shoving the tiny rings in his pocket, Frank grabs the sides of Gerard’s face and kisses him like he fucking means it. Because he does.

Because he’s not a coward.

His mouth feels naked as fuck though, and it makes him laugh. Gerard laughs too, hands on Frank’s thighs, and it’s the best kiss Frank’s ever had in his life (and he’s kissed his fair share of people).

“I wanna stay,” he whispers against Gerard’s lips. “We were supposed to meet, right? You said so yourself.”

Frank feels him smile. “Yeah.”

And then, because of course this moment can’t last forever, there’s a knock at the door.

Gerard sighs and pulls back. Frank almost immediately misses the warmth of his mouth (the only warm part of him, it seems), but he keeps his hand on his thigh. “Mikey,” he says. “Come in.”

The door opens, letting in the soft yellow light from the living room. Mikey stands there looking guilty as hell, and Ray is behind him eating a burger like he lives here. “Hey,” Mikey says, his eyes jumping from Gerard to Frank. “How are you feeling?”

Frank clears his throat and scratches at the back of his neck. The guy’s not all covered in blood anymore, but he can’t really find it in him to meet his eyes yet. “I’m fine. I think. Thanks for, uh, healing me? Again?”

Mikey nods in that slow, languid way of his. “Sorry you had to see that. I thought the door was locked.”

Frank shrugs. “I’ll live.” He realizes what he said after he says it, but no one else seems to have caught on.

Ray brandishes his half-eaten burger. “I Postmated a couple of those Impossible Whoppers if you want one.” And to Mikey, he says, “I’ll bet a hundred bucks he didn’t eat anything for breakfast.”

Mikey glances over his shoulder and smiles, showing off his fangless teeth, then turns the smile on Frank, though it dims a little bit when he does. Frank wishes he’d stop feeling guilty or whatever’s wrong with him, because as far as it seems to him, everything worked out fine.

Like he could read his mind, Gerard squeezes Frank’s hand.

Mikey says, “Wanna come out and sit?”

“Yeah, sure.” Frank gets up off the bed and holds his hand out for Gerard. Ray chokes a little on his veggie burger and if this wasn’t a weird time for everyone, he’d kick him in the balls.

“No, Gee, you need to rest,” Mikey tells his brother seriously.

But Gerard gets up anyway and takes Frank’s hand. His fingers fit like puzzle pieces between Frank’s. Frank goes a little weak in the knees.

“I’m fine,” Gerard assures. “Our sleep schedules can’t get any worse.”

Mikey is about to turn away when he sees their hands, and Frank starts to sweat a little. He told Gerard to make some friends, not whatever  _ this _ is that they’ve got going on all of a sudden. But he looks pleased.

“Hey, Frankie, where’d your piercings go?” Ray asks, and Frank  _ really _ wants to kick him in the balls.

“Not in my face, Toro.”

Ray smiles.

Out in the living room, Mikey and Ray sit down next to each other, in front of Ray’s laptop on the coffee table that’s open to his YouTube channel. It looks like he was showing Mikey some of his videos. Gerard sits on the loveseat and pulls Frank down with him. Ray tosses a Burger King bag into his lap.

“So what were you doing here, Frank?” Mikey asks, cracking his knuckles. It would probably be intimidating now that Frank knows they’re  _ vampires, _ but he’s just nervous. Out-of-character-ingly so. Frank kind of wants to give him a hug.

Frank glances at Gerard, then takes a burger from the bag. His stomach growls almost immediately when he finds it’s still warm.  _ Fuck, _ he didn’t realize how hungry he actually was. “I was worried. About Gerard. And, you know,” he starts to unwrap the burger, not meeting Mikey’s eyes.  _ He _ feels guilty all of a sudden, for no good reason, “I was sort of hoping you guys could tell me what the fuck was up.”

Mikey runs a hand over his hair, sharing a small smile with Gerard. “It’s been a long time since either of us had any proper friends, and this was the first time we decided to not tell.”

“Why didn’t you want to tell us?” Ray asks softly. They’re sitting pretty damn close.

Something crosses Mikey’s face that Frank can’t decipher. It looks almost like heartbreak. “Gee and I’ve been around for a long time, almost two centuries, you know? Relationships can be kind of shitty when you’re like us, and the last one I was in…,” he tilts his head to the side, “was rough. And that was when Gee started getting really bad so we just figured fuck it, it’s not worth it. We’ll be hermits together.”

“But I thought you  _ wanted _ Gerard to make friends?” Frank asks as he nurses his veggie burger so he doesn’t make himself sick.

Mikey smiles, and it’s sad. “He won’t let me help him get better, so I kinda went back on my  _ fuck it _ a while ago. He needs friends.” He makes a vague gesture in their direction. “And—more.”

Frank’s ears are currently being blowtorched. Gerard presses himself a little into Frank’s side and they get even hotter.  _ And more, _ he said. Fuck, none of this feels real.

“So I’m sorry. I guess we didn’t think things through.”

“That’s fine, man,” Frank tells him, leaving out the need to say  _ everything worked out fine _ again. “I’m just glad you guys aren’t like…on the run from the FBI or something, because that’s what I was starting to think.”

Everyone laughs at that, Frank included, and he’s so relieved things have been cleared up.

“I’m glad it’s you,” Gerard says when they go quiet. He’s got his legs underneath him and he looks so cozy that Frank wants to kiss him again. But he doesn’t because he has  _ some _ self control. “Both of you, I mean.”

“It’s okay, you can just say Frank,” Ray says with a knowing smile on his stupid face.

Mikey turns to him. “No, we mean both of you.”

Ray goes a little red which is  _ very _ interesting. He’ll have to corner him about that later.

“You guys are good people,” Mikey continues. “I knew I could trust you the minute I walked into the record shop. Call it vampire’s intuition. We shouldn’t have kept you in the dark.”

“You know what?” Ray says, trying and failing to tuck his hair behind his ears. “I feel like I’ve known you two forever. Even you, Gerard, and I just met you like an hour ago.”

“Yeah,” Gerard agrees. “I think we all feel that way. Like we were all meant to know each other.” He casually puts his hand on Frank’s knee when he says it, and Frank crushes the Burger King bag in surprise. It’s so loud he makes himself jump.

“Which is weird.” Mikey gets up from the couch and holds his hand out in Frank’s direction. “Do you two have anything supernatural in your blood?”

Ray laughs. “Frank’s Italian, if that’s what you mean.”

Frank presses the crushed up paper bag into Mikey’s hand, and when they touch, the lamp in the corner flickers, and Frank realizes suddenly that he’s been all tingly this whole time and he didn’t even realize it. He’s glad he noticed though, because that’s the one thing he’s dying to get an answer to.

“I tingle when I’m around you,” he says when Mikey comes back from throwing out his trash. He pauses and looks at Frank strangely. “I mean, like, I feel all staticy and weird. Do you know what the hell that’s about?”

Mikey shares a look with Gerard, but neither of them look like they understand what Frank’s talking about, which makes him feel like he’s losing his mind all over again. Come on, the guys are  _ vampires _ and  _ this _ is weird to them?

“We thought it was just because there’s a full moon coming up,” Ray offers. “And it’s also Frank’s birthday, so it kind of made sense. I don’t know.”

“Wait, isn’t the full moon on Halloween?” Gerard asks slowly.

“Yeah,” Frank tells him.

Mikey claps his hands on his thighs as he sits back down. “Well there you go. People born on All Hallows’ Eve are more susceptible to supernatural energies. You probably wouldn’t feel anything if there wasn’t a full moon that day too.”

“See, Frankie? You’re just a freak. We knew it.”

Frank rolls his eyes, then says, “Oh, shit.” He sits up. “One more thing if you don’t, like, mind.”

“No, we’ve never seen  _ Twilight.” _

Frank looks at Gerard and snorts. “I was gonna ask about the people that followed you here, or whatever. When you came to the shop you told Mikey that they’re here, and Mikey, you said you weren’t gonna let them run you out again.”

The bags under Gerard’s eyes seem to get darker just like that, and when Frank looks at Mikey, he’s frowning, but he rolls his eyes in exasperation. “The purists. They’re just a bunch of assholes with a superiority complex.”

“Purists?” Ray asks, sounding intrigued as hell. He’s probably getting good content for his Halloween video.

“There aren’t any  _ head vampires,” _ Gerard tells them, “but they’re as close as you can get. They’re obsessed with upholding the sanctity of vampirism. You know, everyone needs to drink human blood, everyone needs to be part of a clan. That kind of stuff.”

“Well, we already know you don’t drink human blood,” Ray says, and Frank realizes him and Mikey were probably having the same conversation out here that him and Gerard were having in the bedroom. Well, probably not the  _ same _ conversation, “so I could probably guess you’re not in a clan either.”

Mikey clicks his tongue. “Bingo. They’ve been up our asses for the better part of six decades, chased us all over the country.”

Frank swallows. “Are they dangerous?”

Ray leans forward on the couch, his eyebrows forming a unibrow of concern.

“I’d love to say no,” Mikey tells them, “but we don’t want to have to lie to you anymore. They’re capable of some shit, I’ll just leave it at that. All vampires are.”

“If they choose to be.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Ray says.

“No, but it’s the truth.”

“If we lie low, they mostly leave us alone,” Gerard says. “We actually haven’t seen them in about five years.”

A trickle of relief crawls down Frank’s spine, but: “Then what are they doing here now?”

Mikey shrugs. “They never leave us on the back burner for long. I wouldn’t worry.”

“But you’re not gonna leave because of them, right?”

Mikey smiles reassuringly. “No. We’ll take care of them if we have to though.”

“But let’s hope we don’t have to,” Gerard says tiredly, wilting into Frank’s side a little. “They’re so annoying.”

Mikey hums and gets up off the couch. Frank watches as he takes Gerard’s chin in his hand and tips his head up. It looks like he’s looking at his eyes. “You need to eat,” he says matter-of-factly, and lets go.

Gerard wrinkles his nose. He’s so white he’s almost translucent, and it upsets Frank’s sensitive stomach. This is gonna be hard, he knows it. He just hopes it’ll all be worth it, because that whole ending in flames thing? Yeah, he doesn’t want that.

“Yes,  _ little  _ brother.”

Mikey messes up Gerard’s already messy hair and heads into the kitchen. Ray watches him curiously, then gets up and follows.

“Well,” Gerard says quietly, rubbing his thumb back and forth over Frank’s thigh. “I have a feeling Mikey’s going to kick you out now.”

Frank puts his hand on the side of Gerard’s neck, and tries to pretend it’s not weird and slightly concerning that he can’t feel a pulse. “That’s fine. I need to go home and process anyway. I think.”

Gerard cocks his head to the side, frowning. “Are you going to be okay?”

Frank squeezes his neck.  _ “Me? _ Yeah, I’ll be fine. This is just…”

“Weird?”

He snorts. “Fucking insane, I was gonna say.”

Gerard looks at him steadily, his eyebrows turned up. For such a fossil, he sure wears his heart on his sleeve. Frank realizes they kind of match, in that arena. “And we’re okay?”

Frank’s stomach jumps. He feels like he’s breathing through a pinhole when he says, “Yeah. I think so.” He uses the hand on Gerard’s neck to pull him in for a kiss, and it’s so sweet, so gentle, Frank kind of wishes he could stay right here in this moment for the rest of his life.

When they break apart, he remembers the socks.

“Oh.” He sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls them out. “You, uh, left these at my place.”

Gerard smiles so wide his eyes are almost swallowed by wrinkles. He takes the balled-up socks. “I forgot all about them. Do you want yours back?”

Frank waves him off with a laugh when Gerard pulls his legs out from under him like he’s about to strip them off. “Nah, that’s cool, I’ve got enough pairs.”

Gerard nods, still smiling. “Take your sweatshirt then.”

“Keep it. It suits you.” His eyes catch on the  _ Star Wars _ logo littering Gerard’s legs and he bites the inside of his cheek so hard he almost makes a couple new holes in his body.

If Gerard could blush, he definitely would be right now. He presses his socks back into Frank’s hands. “Then I want you to have these.”

Frank’s for sure blushing though. He feels like he hasn’t  _ stopped _ blushing since he met Gerard. He puts the socks back into the pocket of his coat. “What’s one more pair.”

“Hey, Frankie, we should get going.”

Ray’s putting his coat and shoes on at the door, and Frank reluctantly gets up from the couch, letting Gerard’s hand slip off his thigh. “I’ll try to stop by if I’m feeling up to it.”

“But only if you’re feeling up to it,” Frank tells him. “And if Mikey won’t murder you.”

“That won’t stop him,” Mikey says mildly from the kitchen.

Gerard shakes his head, but he’s smiling in that quiet, tight-lipped way of his.

“It was nice meeting you finally, Gerard,” Ray says when he packs up his laptop.

“You too.”

“You’ve got my number, Frank.” Mikey comes out of the kitchen with one of those huge soup mugs cradled in his hands. The smell of blood is so cloying it makes Frank’s nose tingle, and he has to swallow down the urge to gag. That’s probably not very polite. “I don’t mind playing messenger.”

“Cool, yeah. Thanks.”

Mikey hands the mug to Gerard, who looks like he wants to gag too, but when he looks back up at Frank, his pointy little face melts back into a smile, fangs and all.

_ Yeah, _ Frank thinks,  _ this’ll definitely be worth it. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading and commenting, your kind words make my day <333
> 
> [retweetable tweet](https://twitter.com/worrydarIing/status/1362840133116911621?s=20)
> 
> [rebloggable post](https://fitzwilde.tumblr.com/post/644486495664750592/marked-me-like-a-bloodstain)


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